McCain Sole Display Ad Candidate in July, Shows AdRelevance
UPDATE: Display ad impressions for the Republican Senator have steadily dropped over the past few months, from 11.5 million in April to 125,000 in July.
UPDATE: In November 2007, Nielsen Online AdRelevance, formerly Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance, provided ClickZ News with revised data on political advertisers for the months of April through September 2007. The amended information affected several stories, including this one, published by ClickZ during that time period. Detailed corrections can be found below the following original story.*
Original Story:
Much like the ad industry itself, online ads from presidential candidates seem to be taking a summer siesta. Though the dogged Web campaign for Republican Senator John McCain kept on keeping on, his display ad impression numbers continued to dwindle in July.
Previous Web ad dabblers like Republican primary hopefuls Mitt Romney and Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who petitioned Drudge Report readers to “Defeat Amnesty Politicians” in the previous month, cut display advertising altogether, according to Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance data.
Democratic primary candidates also appear to have stayed away from Web ads in July. However, PointRoll expandable video banners for Senator Barack Obama have been spotted around the Web this month, including on UnionLeader.com, where early primary voters in New Hampshire reading the Manchester-based newspaper site would be sure to catch them.
Paring down its online ad efforts in the dog days, the McCain campaign’s impressions have steadily dropped over the past few months, from 11.5 million impressions in April to just 125,000 in July. The campaign also has reduced the types of ad creative it’s run in that time, from at least 14 variations in April to seven in July, according to ads observed by AdRelevance. About half of the ads run by the campaign showed up on conservative news and opinion site National Review Online in July.
McCain’s online team also revived some ad creatives last month not picked up by AdRelevance in the prior couple months. For instance, ads describing McCain as “One Tough Guy, One Great Leader” and banners declaring, “It’s time for straight talk on Iraq,” showed up again last month.
| July 2007 Ads by John McCain 2008 |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ad Copy | Call to Action | Ad Sizes | Number of Impressions | Sites/Networks |
| “America Deserves Experience. America Deserves Straight Talk. McCain.” | “Join John McCain” | 160×600 Wide Skyscraper, 300×250 Medium Rectangle, 728×90 Leaderboard | 46,000 | |
| “$74 million tax dollars for peanut storage costs? That’s Nuts! $100 million tax dollars for citrus assistance? Orange You Outraged? $60.4 million tax dollars for salmon fisheries? Something smells fishy. Outraged by Pork?” | “Take the survey” | 160×600 Wide Skyscraper | 19,000 | |
| “One Tough Guy. One Great Leader. McCain.” | 160×600 Wide Skyscraper | 16,000 | Google, Investors | |
| “It’s time for straight talk on Iraq. McCain.” | “Support John McCain” | 300×250 Medium Rectangle | 15,000 | |
| “$74 million tax dollars for peanut storage costs? That’s Nuts! $100 million tax dollars for citrus assistance? Orange You Outraged? $60.4 million tax dollars for salmon fisheries? Something smells fishy. Outraged by Pork?” | “Sign the Petition” | 300×250 Medium Rectangle | 13,000 | Investors |
| “McCain. Ready to Lead. McCain.”td> | “Join John McCain” | 728×90 Leaderboard | 7,000 | |
| “Surrender is not an option” | “Sign the Petition today” | 160×600 Wide Skyscraper, 300×250 Medium Rectangle | 9,000 | Google, Valueclick |
| Source: Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance, 2007 | ||||
| July 2007 Sites and Impressions by John McCain 08 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site/Sub-Site | Impressions | |||
| National Review | 63,000 | |||
| CBSNews.com | 17,000 | |||
| YouTube | 10,000 | |||
| Dictionary.com | 6,000 | |||
| FrontPage Magazine | 6,000 | |||
| Blog*Spot | 6,000 | |||
| FARK.com | 4,000 | |||
| The Christian Science Monitor | 3,000 | |||
| HowStuffWorks | 3,000 | |||
| 2theadvocate.com – WBRZ : Baton Rouge, LA | 3,000 | |||
| Washington Times: Washington, DC | 2,000 | |||
| Family Education Network Infoplease | 1,000 | |||
| Thesaurus.com | 1,000 | |||
| Source: Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance, 2007 | ||||
* UPDATE:In November 2007, Nielsen Online AdRelevance, formerly Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance, provided ClickZ News with revised data on political advertisers for the months of April through September 2007. Although the measurement firm originally reported John McCain 2008 was the only presidential candidate campaign running display ads in July, Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s campaign also ran display ads. The small static image ad ran on Yahoo News and urged viewers to visit Obama’s Web site.
| July 2007 Ads by Obama for America |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ad Copy | Call to Action | Ad Sizes | Number of Impressions | Web Sites |
| N/A | “Visit the Official Obama ’08 Campaign Website” | 120×60 Button | 16,000 | Yahoo News |
| Source: Nielsen Online AdRelevance, 2007 | ||||
