Targeted Internet advertising banners helped Sen. John McCain's GOP presidential campaign meet Friday's 2:00 p.m. PST deadline for generating the 10,000 signatures needed to get on the Virginia primary ballot, in the first use of online ads by a presidential candidate. As many as 1,500 Internet portals, reportedly including Excite (Nasdaq: XCIT), began serving up three different banners on Saturday, Dec. 11, and kept serving those banners until Thursday night. One of the ads features a photo of McCain on a field of blue with text extolling Netizens to "Help John McCain today!" A second similar ad on a white background featured a larger photo that read "John McCain needs your help ..." On both banners, the text changes to "Click here to find out how."
A third banner specifically targeted Virginians in the text, which read "Vote Now! Put John McCain on the ballot in Virginia?" -- with a radio box flipping between "yes" and "no."
Clicking on a banner took users to a one-page Web site that prompted them for contact information.
McCain campaign 'very pleased'
"Nearly 100 people contacted us saying they wanted to do a petition drive in their area," said McCain 2000 spokesperson Nancy Ives. "We're very pleased with the results."
"The click-through rate on this campaign was in excess of 2 percent, which is unheard of," said Jay MacAniff, spokesperson for Aristotle Publishing, the political software firm that masterminded the campaign's pinpoint targeting. "Fifty percent of the people who clicked through the banner signed up to help McCain get onto the Virginia ballot."
Aristotle targeted the ads by cross-referencing Virginia voter registration records with the user lists on participating Web sites, so that the banners would reach only Virginia voters. "This is the first ever politically targeted ad campaign on the Internet," said MacAniff.
Banner's negative history
Ad banners began gaining credibility as a potential campaign tool in 1998, when New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Vallone ran negative ads against his opponent, Republican George Pataki, on the New York Times Web site. Pataki won the race, but a subsequent study found his favorability rating dropped seven points with those who saw the ad.
"The Internet is changing politics, and it's changing it twice as fast as even the most outlandish predictions," said Phil Noble, president of PoliticsOnline and a relative veteran in the young world of online politics. "The Internet did not exist in politics in 1994. By 1998 Jesse Ventura said he would not have been elected governor had it not been for the Internet. Now we have banner ads."
The McCain campaign said the ads appeared on approximately 1,500 sites, but could not immediately identify them. Aristotle's MacAniff declined to list the participating portals, citing confidentiality.
But ZDNN has learned that the ads were spotted on Excite.com, something an Excite spokesperson could neither confirm nor deny.
As pleased as they were, the McCain campaign stopped short of promising more banner ads as the primaries approach. "We filed over 20,000 signatures in Virginia today, and clearly this can be credited in part to our outreach efforts on the Internet," said Ives. "But I don't have any specific details as to where we go from here."
"It's a first ... but it certainly wont be the last," said Noble. "My guess is by the end of this campaign cycle, political banner advertising is going to be all over the Internet."
