Online ads: the benefit

Tamara A. Small

Tamara A. Small (Mount Allison University) has published work on online election campaigning in Party Politics and in the Canadian Journal of Political Science and about Internet regulation in Election Law Journal.

 

Check out this new ad by the Liberal Party.

This is a web-exclusive ad, not aired or distributed through traditional channels like television or radio. This is a good example of the Liberal’s taking advantage of the Internet. Advertising is one of the most expensive aspects of election campaigning. Canadian political parties spend roughly half of their campaign budget on advertising. Online ads are comparatively inexpensive. The Internet is much cheaper in terms of hardware as well as production costs. Though the ad is very effective in its message, it isn’t particularly sophisticated. Unlike television advertising where parties pay for eyeballs, the cost on the Internet does not increase with the size of the audience. Indeed, this ad was viewed by almost 40,000 people in the first 24 hours of its release on YouTube Additionally, online ads like this can be produced very quickly, in order to react to very particular situations such as the Conservative party using Facebook to screen event attendees.