Google Offers New Election Search Trends Hub

Whether campaigning at the national, state or county level in today's digital-first environment, political pros want to track what engaged voters care about in real time, and what better gauge than Internet activity? Enter the newly launched Google Trends Election Hub, a trove of free research. Search Engine Land recently reported on how the new Google hub site takes a deep dive into this year’s election-related search trends across the United States, with real-time reports on president and vice president candidate search queries, by state, plus search data on state and county political issues. And if you wonder how engaged the electorate is online, Google reports this year’s election-related searches are up 240% over the same period preceding 2012’s Election Day. Just some of the goodies you can cull: The hub home page has a chart graphing national search interest in each candidate over the previous week, as well as links to daily state-by-state search interests, voter registration searches, and the top election issue-related searches by state during the past week. There are also charts graphing the number of “Vote for [presidential candidate]” searches during the past week, and tracking of searches for “how to vote,” which Google reports is at its highest rate ever. At the state level, candidates and causes can drill down to the county level on issue interests; for example, while the economy is the most searched issue on average across the swing state of Florida, immigration is more searched in southern counties in that state. There's even a YouTube election map so you can see how many people are watching Trump vs. Clinton videos. Check it out at https://www.google.com/trends/story/election2016

Political Digital: Why Google, Facebook, Twitter Rule

Political campaigns are forecast to spend over $1 billion on digital advertising this election cycle, and they have more online, social and mobile options than ever before. But so far, just three platforms are set to claim most of the political digital ad spend--Google, Facebook and Twitter--reports AdExchanger, a digital marketing trade publication. Political campaigns tend to end up with Google or Facebook even if they buy via a political ad network or independent media/technology seller, the report notes. One reason is that political ad buying involves long-term planning and reserved buys of short duration, which is very different from the iterative testing and optimization that independent agencies are used to handling for brand advertisers. The leading digital platforms also have benefited this election from the disruptive impact of "earned media," the free coverage that GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump used in trouncing the Rubio and Bush campaigns despite their big paid-media spends. Paid-media effectiveness doubts have sent political operatives looking for safe bets--and that benefits proven digital media incumbents. The Digital Big 3 have further honed their edge by aggressively hiring political insiders with Democratic or Republican connections in building their account teams. The AdExchanger article cites recent VP of policy hires such as a GOP congresswoman for Google, a George W. Bush aide for Facebook, and a senior Democratic aide for Twitter. Plus, Facebook and Google have developed new tools specifically tailored to politicos. Facebook offers targeting of "political influencers" who actively consume and share political news on the platform, and, new for 2016, voter file matching. Meanwhile, Google has introduced a beta tool just for presidential candidates, Posts, which gives them some control over which content is displayed in a search of their name. For more, read http://adexchanger.com/politics/three-big-web-companies-are-dominating-political-ad-budgets/

GOP Hopefuls Face Online Ad Space Sell-outs

Even before all the Republican presidential hopefuls can enter the 2016 race, the hottest online ad inventory is selling out, especially for the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries, reports the National Journal. There were digital-ad shortages ahead of the 2012 and 2014 elections, too, but not so far in advance, note political pros and online sellers like Google. But, with the summer of 2015 still ahead, winter 2016 ad inventory is booking up in this presidential race. The ads that are selling out the fastest are those that automatically play on Hulu, YouTube and other Internet-based videos that users can't skip. With a field of nearly 20 GOP candidates, and super PAC money, the ad crunch is not surprising, and Peter Pasi, now vice president of political sales at Collective and a former GOP digital ad strategist, predicts "a huge shortfall." The ad space that will be available for late arrivals includes Facebook, which sells video ads at auction, so campaigns can't lock them up in advance, and YouTube's skippable ads, which are also sold at auction. But political strategists advise conservative campaigns to grab prime ad real estate early, especially since there is little penalty for pre-buying; most ad reservations can be cancelled later at no cost or for a small fee. Perhaps just as important, campaigns are urged to use more sophisticated data targeting than in the past to make the most of scarce ad inventory, avoiding wasted dollars by serving ads only to likely caucus-goers or primary voters. "It's BYOD--bring your own data--if you will," remarks Kenny Day, head of political-advocacy sales for Yahoo. For the full story, read http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/websites-are-already-selling-out-of-ad-inventory-for-2016-20150512