Credit: Chong + Koster

Writing in Politics Magazine, Josh Koster and Tyler Davis describe the microtargeted ad campaign they helped run against Lou Dobbs:

We needed to gain and keep the press’ attention, so we deployed digital paid media to target media employees specifically. The Facebook feature “workplace targeting” was our primary weapon. We targeted all CNN/AOL-Time Warner employees with 500 points per day (the Facebook max). We ran dozens of different ads, testing message hooks from “Why did you let Lou Dobbs broadcast from a hate rally?” to “Why is CNN profiting off racism?” We even called out CNN’s on-air talent by name: “Hey Soledad O’Brian, why don’t you ask Lou Dobbs what it’s like to be Latino in America,” to ensure the CNN staff was sending screenshots between departments. We also workplace targeted the staff of the 25 biggest political and national news outlets in the country.

The anti-Lou Dobbs drive that culminated with him getting dropped from CNN seemed to really benefit from the fact that a considerable number of people were, in a wide-spread sort of way, getting fed up with Dobbs' increasing vehemence -- and volume -- over the last months and years of his stint at CNN. Rather than leaving folks to yell at the TV and throw pillows at Dobbs' face, the campaign gave them a vehicle for those passions.

So in addition to the nuances in online microtargeting technique that we can take away from the Dobbs episode, one other lesson to take away from this action might be that it helps to give loud voice to what people are already thinking and perhaps even grumbling about, but not really saying outloud.

There's a pretty good chance that you've already seen evidence elsewhere of the fact that Google is rather thrilled with how aggressively Scott Brown's campaign embraced the suite of Google tools in his win. Google reps are reporting that the campaign dropped $145,000 on a "network blast" that saturated the Internet with Brown ads in the final days of the campaign, and all told the campaign spent some $230,000 on YouTube ads and overlays, visual ads, and in-search advertising. The result? Brown's ads were put in front of the faces of Massachusetts residents 65 million times in the months leading up to the election. A Google rep praised Brown's online ad effort as "very slick, very targeted, and very strategic."

But something else has Google reps particularly chuffed: how much the Brown campaign, they say, relied upon Google's full suite of tools, including their free online collaborative apps. Brown's new media director Robert Willington tweeted, for example, "Where would our #masen campaign be without google docs? scary thought." The Brown campaign, said the company, relied upon Gmail Chat to communicate. And then, says Google, there was their election-day voter protection hotline, run through -- you guessed it -- Google Voice.

On the Coakley online front, two sources with knowledge of the new media aspect of her campaign report that Coakley's side -- thinking that it had the race sewn up -- didn't invest in a Google Ad strategy until new media strategists from Organizing for America got involved in the race, after it started to become clear that Coakley was going to have to put up a real fight to win the seat.

ClickZ's Kate Kaye has a look at the Massachusetts Republican's online operation, with some good details on online ad strategy and insights from the campaign's new media staff and consultants:

Today the campaign needs that national online support to transform into local, get-out-the-vote volunteers willing to knock on doors and make phone calls. On Thursday, the campaign launched a highly targeted display ad effort aimed at people living within 30 miles of its 10 regional field offices across the state. The ads, delivered using the "Google network blast" or "surge" tactic, include messages specific to each region; ads targeted to people living near Plymouth, Massachusetts, encourage supporters to "Volunteer in Plymouth."

"We have targeted towns that we want to win," said Rob Willington, Brown's online campaign strategist and executive director of RebuildTheParty.com, the organization formed after the '08 elections to educate Republicans about digital campaign tools and techniques.

"When you need to conserve funds, targeting becomes extremely important," said Mindy Finn, partner at Engage, a Washington, D.C.-based digital consultancy that serves right-leaning campaigns. The company is handling Brown's online fundraising effort, which has attracted headlines for its success.

The full thing is here.

With President Obama in China, the advocacy group Sudan Now is engaging in some clever Facebook ad tactics. The group, reports Mark Leon Goldberg, is running spots targeted towards two Facebook networks: former staffers from Organizing for America and "EOP Staff," a.k.a. the Executive Office of the President. Narrowcasted ads like this have the benefit of raising attention amongst a treasured constituency on a focused issue -- in this case Beijing's continued support for and engagement with the regime in Khartoum, despite the multiple violent fronts on which the Sudanese government has tussled with its people. The bonus benefit is the almost guaranteed earned media coverage for engaging in clever Facebook ad tactics.

Today's ads are part of Sudan Now's broader push to use social media to encourage Obama to "implement real consequences for those in Sudan who continue to commit mass atrocity and undermine peace; lead a more inclusive, robust and urgent peace process for Darfur; and build an international coalition for strict implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and to counter the growing violence in the South." If Sudan Now is truly hoping to reaching White House staff traveling in country with Obama, they'd better hope the Administration isn't relying upon local computers. Facebook is regularly blocked in China.

If most media outlets covering the presidential campaigns had anything to say about it, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social media phenomena would get all the credit for making 2008 the most digital election ever. But that’s only part of the web story. Surely no campaign staffer worth his salt would deny the potential impact of a Barack Obama supporter posting a link on her Facebook page to the candidate’s site. However, the fact is many of the campaigns used a far more measurable online campaign tactic: paid online advertising.

As early as January 2007, candidates still in the exploratory stages had begun buying ad space on the Web. Granted, they spent little compared to what they allocated to television ads or even to Web site building and management. Still, Web ads enabled them to drive potential supporters to their sites in the hopes of getting them to sign up for e-mails, attend a house party, volunteer, or donate a few bucks. And through the use of contextual placements, online ads also were also useful in reinforcing campaign messages. Longtime friend of PdF and techPres, Kate Kaye, has a new book out, “Campaign ’08: A Turning Point for Digital Media,” that tells the story. It's a terrific guide to one of the least-covered but significant aspects of the campaign of 2008, the online ad wars--and no one covered this terrain more closely that Kate, as veterans of both the Obama and McCain campaigns attest. Anyone who is looking to use targeted advertising in their own political efforts online should get a copy.

The House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over Internet practices held a hearing this week that -- if Congress' history is any guide to its future -- may well mark the start of congressional handwringing over how companies like Google and others are using geo-targeting, search histories, and other markers to serve up customized advertisements. Critics (and some advocates) call it "behavioral advertising."

And Congress' interest is particularly relevant for us here because targeting Google advertisements based on what you're searching for, the websites you visit, and where you're surfing from is quickly becoming a standard political online practice. We saw it most recently with the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act, detailed here. It's a tool in the toolbox of nearly all online campaigners these days.

Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher is the chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. This week, he called together a session to examine what's known as deep packet inspection (DPI), which is peeking into the contents of the chunks of information that flow across the Internet so that decisions can be made about how to route them or, in some cases, about how to customize the end users Internet experience based on what they do online and how they do it. Taking a look at the envelopes that Internet data travels in is widely accepted practice. Steaming them open to see what's inside isn't -- yet.

That's why Boucher called the hearing, to examine whether legislation is needing to stave off DPI misuses of DPI before they come into widespread use. He called that prospect "nothing short of frightening."

But it's Round Two of the Boucher hearings that should perk the ears of online practitioners. At this week's hearing, Boucher announced his intention to hold a follow-up session this summer, in collaboration with the House Energy's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, that will focus on the privacy risks raised by behavioral advertising. Google and other online advertising companies are expected to be invited to attend. Boucher is no Internet naive, but the current fuzziness surrounding behavioral ads seem to make him uneasy. As he said at the hearing, "a range of concerns related to online advertising should be vetted."

Boucher's promised that the result of the series of hearing will be legislation aimed at "extending to Internet users [the] assurance that their online experience is more secure." In the name of self interest, if your business or your campaign makes use of targeted online ads, this is one congressional thread worth following.

(Photo of Rick Boucher by joebeone)