Newspapers Can Win More Campaign Dollars

By: Jerome Wilson As every newspaper ad manager knows, the use of television spots is the universal favorite of political advertisers.

In New York, Gov. George Pataki spent all of his multimillion dollar re-election budget in 2002 on TV spots, and not a dime on newspapers. His Democratic opponent, State Comptroller Carl McCall, promised the New York Newspaper Publishers Association that his campaign would advertise in newspapers, but in the end failed to do so. McCall's reason for reneging? His Washington-based political consultant told him that newspaper ads were ineffective in convincing voters.

In fact, the only political advertising that New York newspapers received in 2002, among statewide candidates, was a schedule of display advertisements in upstate newspapers for the reelection campaign of State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. In gearing up for his 2006 campaign for governor, Spitzer's campaign has decided once again to buy newspaper advertising -- this time, on papers' Web sites.

Selling ads on newspaper Web sites could indeed be the way for publishers to get their fair share of the increasingly large expenditures on political advertising. If Howard Dean's campaign for president demonstrated anything, it is that raising money and attracting supporters for political campaigns can be done most effectively over the Internet.

How do newspapers fit into this picture? Newspaper sites offer an ideal vehicle to link potential contributors and supporters to a candidate's Web site, where they can learn more about the candidate, make a campaign contribution with a credit card, sign up as a volunteer, and, of course, leave an e-mail address behind for future contact by the campaign. The online newspaper is probably one of the most effective vehicles to drive new visitors to a candidate's site.

Although this has yet to filter down widely to state and local election campaigns, it has been recognized in a big way by the John Kerry campaign. The Kerry camp is now running a series of ads on The New York Times on the Web, at a cost of $25,000 a day for a fixed, all-day position on the home page. The purpose of these ads, which incidentally are entertaining -- in color and animated -- is clear. The Kerry campaign wants to reach potential campaign contributors.

The exact amount of dollars that the Kerry campaign has raised, thanks to the ads on the Times' site, has not been revealed. However, The Washington Post recently ran an article titled, "Internet Helped Kerry Raise $43 Million." Some of those millions, undoubtedly, came via NYTimes.com. Certainly, the campaign would not keep running these ads if this were not the case. Newspaper Web site ads also have the more traditional advertising benefit of getting into public view the brand name of the candidate.

To date, the Bush campaign, having raised more than $200 million, is still going about political advertising the old-fashioned way, continuing its series of television spots.

Do newspaper display ads in a political campaign have a future? To answer this requires a dose of hard reality for the newspaper industry. Like it or not, for the foreseeable future display advertising will not have a primary role in advertising by political campaigns. The newspaper industry must learn to accept this -- and make the best of it.

And in 2004 the Internet is the place to be for politics. This being the case, newspaper ad departments, and state and national newspaper organizations, should start knocking on the doors of political campaigns, selling the value of online advertising. Newspaper reps soliciting campaign advertising should bear in mind that political ad consultants are used to buying TV spots for their candidates, and they make a lot of money doing so. For some consultants there will clearly be a reluctance to change their TV-only attitudes. In such cases newspapers may find that going directly to the candidates themselves is the best way to overrule a reluctant consultant.

Innovative consultants, and forward-looking candidates, will soon come to realize the unique value of advertising on newspaper Web sites. What a delicious irony that the tried-and-true medium of newspapers, with their Web sites, are now at the cutting edge of modern political advertising.