Your Humble Blogger was thinking this morning, whilst perusing the aftermath of the debate between the candidates for Democratic nomination for Senator here in my home state, that we might just be getting near the point where television ads are not very cost-effective in primary campaigns. Or we might not. It’s hard to tell.
I’m guessing that most people who are really interested in politics vote in the primaries. I’m also guessing that most people who are really interested in politics have found the internet a congenial medium for that interest. I’m extrapolating from my own experience, of course, which is always dangerous, and I’m aware that the existence of millions of primary-voting activists who don’t spend an hour a day on the internet would not leave much of a visible mark, but that’s my guess. At least, I’m thinking that a pretty big percentage of primary voters will, at some point, voluntarily get some information about the candidates off the web.
And I think that it’s got to be fairly cheap to run a decent web site. At least compared to an ad buy on television. And, of course, in these Tivotic days, it’s not clear that the ad buy is reaching primary voters at all. I think most primary voters who watch candidate ads on television do so voluntarily. That is, I will sometimes refrain from changing over to Good Eats during a commercial break so I can see the latest campaign ad. But then, most people who would do that would, I’m guessing, watch the ad off the candidate’s website. Which may make the cost of actually running the add mostly waste.
The reason I’m wondering this is that (I think) a good deal of the cost of campaigns is television advertising, and if (as I also think) the financial bar for entry into a campaign is too high, busting the television market may do more to lower it than any public-finance law or campaign-contribution regulation. If we get to the point where a local town mayor or state assemblyman can run a reasonably high-profile challenge for a US Congress seat without having to buy television time, then there will be a lot more available challengers, I would think.
We’re not at that point yet. Even if television ads are too expensive for the recognition reward, it will take risk-averse candidates quite a little while to grasp that fact. And newspaper reporters, who are still (strangely) the ones who get to decide which candidates are real and which are fringe, will take much longer to abandon the TV-ad benchmark. I would be surprised if the percentage of campaign money spent on television time goes down more than a few percent in the 2006 cycle or the 2008 cycle. But we’re in this democracy business for the long haul, right?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
But why aren’t you watching Good Eats in the first place (as opposed to something else from which you flip to Good Eats periodically)?
Kudos for not flipping over to Emerill, though!
Bam!
I find it difficult and unpleasant to get info about candidates from web sites. A television ad also gives me some idea what the person looks like, which creates a convenient handle when I’m then hearing statements from them or about them on the radio (which is where I get the majority of my local political news). But if my computer played video well, and if I could find the correct web site, and if that web site were clear enough, and if I thought to look for it, putting the ad on the web site would be sufficient for me.
Among the people I know who vote in primaries, I’m more likely than average to have sought out some info, and yet television still works better for me.
I think you’re right that a decent web site should be much cheaper, and should be an adequate tool, and I hope we’re headed towards that. Though it’s much harder with a web site to excuse the deliberate vagueness and lack of information, since there is then room for a candidate to articulate their positions and their reasoning. And in the end, that may be what keeps television and direct mail dominant — the built-in excuse for avoiding taking a stand.
Also, television is push, while websites are pull; that is, you don’t have to take any action you wouldn’t take otherwise to encounter a TV ad, and you do to encounter a website.
At the point when DVRs (TiVo et al) get so ubiquitous that TV commercials (of any kind) become entirely useless because literally nobody sees them, then candidates will have to find some other push technique, ’cause just providing an info site and letting people find it only works when people already know about you and come looking.
But at the point when TV ads are no longer effective at all, TV will have to change, because all advertisers (not just politicians) will stop spending money on ads. At that point, TV will switch to a different model — in-show sponsorships like the olden days, or sidebar ads, or really entertaining ads that people want to watch, or some new approach. And politicians can use whatever model other advertisers use. (Now I’m picturing politicians sponsoring a show…. “We now return to West Wing, sponsored by the Hillary Clinton for President campaign.”)
I think Michael’s last point is valid, too, but I would put it a little differently: TV is great for sound bites, for short quick punchy high-impact visual and auditory presentation. Until broadband is universal, the primary strength of the web will continue to lie in being able to present a detailed rich site with lots of information. (Sure, you can have flash (and Flash) as well as, or instead of, substance on the web. (Now I want to go out and create a web-page authoring tool called Substance.) But a website doesn’t feel like a site unless it has a fair bit of content on it.)
So I think websites will continue for a while to be more suited (than TV) for browsing by people who are really interested, and less suited (than TV) for grabbing your attention and whacking you over the head with the candidate’s catchy brief message.
Well, I had meant to draw a distinction between primary-voters, rather than general-election voters, with the idea that voters in the primary are more likely to pull information than voters who vote in the general election but not the primary. Which could lead to that group getting entirely different info than the other.
Which, of course, is already true, with the pull medium being town hall meetings and rallies and the like.
And what I’m wondering for this cycle is whether putting the TV ad on something like YouTube (or whatever it’s called) would reach as big a percentage of primary voters as putting on TV, particularly when the candidate sends an email with a link to the primary voters in the district. Something like that might well exploit the medium, er, media, er, whatever.
Thanks,
-V.