AOL Launches 'Political' Campaign

Campaigning for political ad dollars, AOL on Thursday debuted an online destination for campaigns, advocacy groups, and companies interested in targeting constituencies online. The AOL Advertising Politics hub connects to Ad Desk for Politics and Display University, both of which were designed by AOL to educate and enable political marketers to more easily purchase display advertising.

For the push, AOL Advertising has expanded its Political and Issue Advocacy team to include seven dedicated team members focused on evangelizing the importance of display advertising in the political community. The team includes Rena Shapiro, who recently joined AOL from Google, where she created their political team in 2007.

"As more campaigns and issue advocacy groups begin to understand the power of the Web, AOL's original content and advertising technology puts us at the forefront of political online advertising," said Shapiro, director of political and issue advocacy accounts.

Through its Politics hub, AOL is promising to help political marketers determine how best to structure their online campaign, whether they are looking to use display advertising to help fund raise, build name recognition, organize their field operations, persuade voters, respond in real-time to negative press or competitive messaging, get out the vote, and educate voters about the issues relating to the race.

"AOL has positioned itself to be the go-to resource for political marketers needing to reach their constituencies," said Jeff Levick, president, AOL global advertising and strategy. "Our Politics hub lets campaigns and issue advocacy groups take their messages directly to voters and key influencers."

Earlier this year, a Supreme Court ruling lifted restrictions on political ad spending from corporations, so companies can now join campaign and issue advocacy groups in influencing voters online.

Meanwhile, the Presidential race of 2008 as well as the 2009 Scott Brown race in Massachusetts clearly showed the impact that spending online can have on a campaign's outcome.

Like any campaign, however, AOL faces its fair share of competition in the political sphere. The Washington Post, for instance, recently unveiled its answer to Politico. PostPolitics.com is led by Chris Cillizza, who writes the paper's The Fix blog, and aggregates political stories and blog posts from across the Post newsroom.

AOL's Ad Desk for Politics is a 'how-to' guide for political targeting in Ad Desk, AOL's display advertising platform. Its Display University, meanwhile, is a microsite to help marketers build their first campaigns and improve existing ones.

Yahoo Strikes Ad, Content Deal With Gannett

Yahoo Friday announced a new advertising and content partnership with Gannett that will allow the media company's newspapers and TV stations to sell Yahoo inventory as part of their digital ad offerings.
Under the agreement, Gannett's 81 newspapers and seven of its broadcast sites nationwide will be able to package Yahoo ad space with their own online inventory using Yahoo's APT platform for delivering targeted display ads. Gannett will also provide editorial content across Yahoo properties including the home page through the initiative that will roll out starting this quarter and continue into 2011.
The deal builds on the newspaper consortium Yahoo launched in November 2006 and now encompasses more than 800 members including The San Jose Mercury-News, New Haven Register and The Dallas Morning News. To date, the consortium has sold more than 40,000 ad campaigns onto Yahoo totaling more than $100 million in sales to date, according to Lem Lloyd, vice president of channel sales at Yahoo.
"It's really in the last 18 months that we've gotten this up and running," said Lloyd, acknowledging the time it has taken to get local newspaper ad sales forces up to speed on its APT system and selling advertising into Yahoo. With the Gannett alliance (which doesn't include USA Today), he added that Yahoo is now working with partners that represent 75% of the country's newspaper circulation.
The APT allows local newspapers to target consumers according to geographic, demographic and behavioral factors in ads that appear on Yahoo properties from mail to sports to news. "So now Gannett's thousands of local representatives can put together digital ad solutions that involve newspaper and broadcast assets plus Yahoo," said Lloyd.
And with local advertising accounting for about half of the $245 billion in total U.S. ad spend, Yahoo is keen to capture a bigger slice of the pie by teaming up with local media outlets. While applauding the deal, Gordon Borrell, president of local media research firm Borrell Associates, said Yahoo may find it especially challenging to work with Gannett's TV stations, since the TV industry is even less accustomed to selling digital inventory than newspapers.

"Television hasn't been as threatened by digital as newspapers, and so hasn't reacted as aggressively in adapting," he said, adding that TV stations typically have smaller ad sales staffs than newspapers to begin with.
Borrell also noted that Yahoo's newspaper consortium overall has been slower to roll out than expected. "We've heard from a number of clients that implementation has been a bit slow, so they're still holding onto the excitement of the deal -- but there are so many newspapers that wanted to jump on, it has left many waiting [for training and technology] and that's led to unmet expectations," he said.
Lloyd, however, emphasized that that on-the-ground training is a key part of the Gannett deal. "It's not our goal to work with every local media co. out there," he said. "We're more about strategic relationship and putting muscle behind that deal to make it work. This is a big commitment from Gannett and from us."

By Mark Walsh