Every day hundreds of millions of people search on Google for information. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide rely on Google to connect with consumers, and hundreds of thousands of publishers worldwide run Google ads on their sites.
2008 has been a watershed year for search and online advertising. Each of the major presidential campaigns were active on Google during the primary process and according to the New York Times, Obama’s campaign manager revealed that nearly 20,000 people signed up to vote in the Texas two-step primary/caucus through Google ads. Candidates and organizations are using Google search and display ads to:
- Sign up supporters
- Raise money through online contributions
- Expand the electorate by registering new voters and encouraging early voting
- Recruit volunteers and promote events
- Persuade undecided voters using banner and video ads on YouTube and across Google’s content network of partner sites
Google Adwords is a global advertising program that enables advertisers to reach the people who are interested in their products or services. Advertisers use Google’s automated tools to create ads, place bids to serve their ads, select the types of sites where they’d like their ads to appear and set daily spending budgets. AdWords ranks ads for display in one of two ways: either by CPM (cost per thousand) CPC (cost per click), which is set by the advertiser, together with other factors used to determine the relevance of the ads. With the CPC model, campaigns only pay for interested leads and all of the impressions (or “eyeballs”) are free. Additionally, campaigns can track every dollar to determine which advertising strategy is most successful in order to refine the campaign in real time. This process favors the ads most relevant to users, improving the experience for both the person looking for information and the advertiser looking for interested customers.
Candidates can target ads by search keyword to reach people actively searching for information about the candidate or organization. Target ads also work geographically to reach consumers in a specific region. Candidates can even target specific demographics, such as women, by running ads on sites within the Google Content Network that meet the audience’s interests and demographics.
In addition to AdWords, Google offers numerous other tools suitable for campaigns and organizations, including: YouTube (an entertainment portal that encourages users to upload, find and share video content), Google Maps (a dynamic interactive map product that can be embedded for free into any web page and accessed via mobile phones), Google Checkout (a fast, convenient and customizable contribution process) and Google Analytics (enables campaigns to better understand visitor behavior).
Overview by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), Google Elections Team
Fundraise from Women on Google
Online women donors are particularly active users of Google – 87% of online women donors access Google daily or several times a week and 47% do so for political purposes. Google is a key opportunity for candidates to brand themselves and track their progress with supporters.
To Get Started
Check out Google’s Campaign Toolkit
Take an Adwords tutorial
Learn about Adsense
Learn about Google Checkout for federal candidates
