Wednesday, August 23, 2006

1,000 Google ad ideas

Last week I put out a call for ideas for what Google ad keywords people searching for election information will use (Micah Sifry has more - thanks for the kind words!). The idea is to use those keywords to buy Google ads that support WFP-endorsed House candidates running for Republican-held seats here in New York.

The response from people emailing me ideas was overwhelming - I got over 1,000 ideas for election search terms!

So now we're moving to the next step: raising the money we need to start running Google ads. After Labor Day - the traditional start of the campaign season when more people start paying attention to the candidates - we'll start running Google ads to test the keywords everyone sent in and see what works best. As we move closer to the election, we'll focus on the most popular search terms.

If you want to help Take Back Congress than please make a donation to put these Google ads online today!

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is this targeted? Is it to reach centrists who are googling the candidates to decide who to vote for? Is there polling or research to show that that is how people decide who to vote for in these districts? Or is this meant to preach to the converted - to convince left leaning web users to vote row E instead of B?

Steve Perez said...

Good question: It's to reach working families who aren't registered to a party or who might have voted R in the past but aren't happy with the direction of the country and are looking for information about the election.

And yes, experience and polling shows those voters find the Working Families Party very compelling.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! But I think you didn't understand my question. I know that the target audience you're talking about responds well to the WFP message. I was asking how we know that THESE people will be the ones we reach with these ads.

I'm a democrat blog reader who would never consider voting republican, and I might google Mike Arcuri's name to find out news about his race. I'd also google John Spratt. And I live in Cobble Hill, not in either candidate's district.

Is there any market research to show that swing voters actively search google for info on their candidates? Do we know we'll be reaching them, and not people like me?

Anonymous said...

I won't donate a penny!

The WFP endorses candidates that DON'T support union workers.
In the 47th NY Senate race WFP endorsed Koziol.
His campaign materials don't have a union bug!
NONE!
He is buying campaign stuff that ISN'T made in a union shop. Still he gets our endorsement!
Small wonder that union jobs are fewer and fewer.

Alex Navarro said...

Reply to Anonymous (8:28pm):

Thanks for bringing the Koziol non-union lit matter to our attention. Our deputy director, Bill Lipton, is following up with the Koziol campaign right now to ascertain the facts and, if appropriate express our extreme dismay.

We insist that candidates we endorse support good union jobs in their campaign practices.

Of course, we endorse hundreds of candidates each year and can't police all of them at every second.

And we don't have the power to take away a nomnination after the state filing period.

but we can remember next time.

Thanks for the tip, and please don't hold one candidate's mistake against hundreds of others.

- ASN

Steve Perez said...

anonymous 9:28, the quick answer is yes. Also, some of the ads will send people to a page that asks for their contact information, and we'll use that to double check that we're getting people in the appropriate districts.

One thing to note, the ads will mostly be by geography rather than the candidate's name. So you'll see an ad when you search for "Utica Congress" or "Utica election" as well as when you search for "Arcuri Congress"