The Second Cup: Do you...Hulu?

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Mon, 2009-11-23 10:40

Political and Issue Advertising on Hulu

Interesting email in from Campus Progress the other day — as part of a student loan reform campaign, they’re running ads both on cable and on the TV/video-viewing website Hulu. The email itself focuses on encouraging recipients to watch the ad and spread the YouTube version virally via Facebook and Twitter, though it also includes a carefully couched fundraising ask as well (obviously not as much of a priority when you’re sending to college students). The landing page fits the email perfectly, with prominent post-to-Facebook-and-Twitter links plus an email-Congress (and presumably list-building) angle as well.

1080p HD is Coming to YouTube

We're excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube's HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience. 

Is One-Way Communication Enough in the 21st Century?

Once I heard about a man who was considered an excellent communicator. He always returned letters and phone calls, and remembered to get in touch with people he had not talked to in a while. Quite impressive to accomplish that reputation without the techniques we have today. Most people did not know the keys behind his skills; discipline and continuity. Every Tuesday leaving work and spending a few hours with his family, he went to his study and did all his correspondence in one night. Sure, this might seem a bit strict and impersonal, but no one knew, they just admired him for always getting in touch.

How good are we really at communicating today? What do you do and how well do you do it? Could you become better at emailing old associates, contacting them more often? What opportunities did you lose because you did not follow-up?

How to Lose and Argument Online (8 Easy Steps)

# Have an argument. Once you start an argument, not a discussion, you've already lost. Think about it: have you ever changed your mind because someone online started yelling at you? They might get you to shut up, but it's unlikely they've actually changed your opinion.
# Forget the pitfalls of Godwin's law. Any time you mention Hitler or even Communist China or Bill O'Reilly, you've lost.
# Use faulty analogies. If someone is trying to make a point about, say, health care, try to make an analogy to something conceptually unrelated, like the space shuttle program, and you've lost....

An Internet Politicos Guide to David Plouffe's "The Audacity to Win"

Here at e.politics, we're happy to read things so you don't have to -- though it this case you should, because  David Plouffe's The Audacity to Win is a great read and one hell of a glimpse into the strategy, tactics and execution of a remarkably successful political operation.

Suspecting the book's value as a resource in the future, I took extensive notes as I read through it -- essentially creating an index of every substantive mention of online politics in the book, which I've reprinted below as a resource for y'all, along with a few links to relevant e.politics articles (the current edition of the book doesn't include its own actual index, unfortunately).

 

The Second Cup: ReTweet Edition

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Thu, 2009-11-12 10:38

Simple is as Simple Does: The Risk of ReTweet

Despite starting Blogger, Evan Williams rarely blogs. But yesterday, for the first time in several months, he decided to put the digital pen to the digital paper in order to lay out his thoughts for Twitter’s new Retweet functionality. It’s a great view into the mindset behind what is already becoming a controversial change.

The Problem with ReTweets

As most probably know, Twitter is in the process of launching a version of the widely used retweet on its own platform.  The move has caused some controversy, as the way retweets has been implemented by Twitter is much different from the unofficial protocols that Twitter users developed organically on their own.  Twitter founder Evan Williams explains Twitter’s reasoning here.

I’ve been testing out the new retweet functionality for a few days, and I must say I am not a fan at all.  Sean Bonner has written a great blog post dissecting what he dislikes about Twitter retweets.   In his post, he hits on my two biggest issues.

Online Advertising Stops Falling Thanks to Search

After two straight quarters of annual declines (aka, the Great Ad Recession of 2009), it looks like online advertising revenues stabilized in the third quarter. The combined online advertising revenues of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL rose 1.2 percent to $8 billion. While the online advertising industry is not out of the woods yet, it might be stabilizing.

At least it is for Google, which was the only one of the four horsemen of Internet advertising to see its ad revenues rise in the quarter (up roughly $400 million from both last quarter and last year). Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft were all down on both a sequential and annual basis.

 

Kate Kaye Talks Online Advertising in the 2008 Campaign

Posted by jm
Thu, 2009-04-23 17:12

Yesterday, Kate Kaye - Senior Editor at ClickZ stopped by DAG to talk to us about her new book, Campaign '08: A Turning Point For Digital Media.

Kate was in town for the #POLC09 conference, to moderate my panel on Social Media Analytics.

Here's a brief video of Kate explaining how McCain and Obama's campaign leveraged online advertising:

A few highlights:

While the conventional wisdom has the McCain campaign getting blown away by Obama online - that's not entirely the case when it comes to paid media.

For example, McCain had some really smart people running his paid media - particular his Google Adwords - and saw excellent results.

However, McCain's advertising was not integrated with the larger campaign message while Obama's was - the team did not have a "seat at the adult table" as Kate aptly puts it. Further the scale of Obama's online ad buys, dwarfed McCain's.

Hungry for more info? Good, then go out and get the book right now.