Candidates: Be wary of internet advertising
The New York Time ran an article today highlighting the dangers of online advertising if candidates don’t pay attention to what sites their ads appear. Mitt Romney, whom the article claims has the largest online advertising presence, has had several ads surface on unlikely websites.
The Nielsen analysis shows Mr. Romney has most frequently advertised on the Microsoft Network and Bell South Internet home pages, as well as on The Drudge Report and FoxNews.com. He and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have had a large presence on Iwon.com, a site that awards cash prizes to players of its casino-style games.
But his campaign aides were surprised to learn from a reporter last week that his banners had also showed up tens of thousands of times on FanFiction.net, according to Advertising.com, the ad network his campaign uses, and Nielsen. They noted that FanFiction was mostly composed of PG- and G- rated material. But it also includes some pornographic fiction.
The aides at first said they did not believe that Mr. Romney’s spots had ever been on Gay.com, but this weekend executives at Advertising.com confirmed that the spot had indeed run on the network over the course of two days in August. They said it was pulled down at the request of Gay.com.
Stuff like this makes me wonder sometimes at how serious these presidential candidates are taking the internet. From reading the article, it seems that a lot of the blame is being placed on Advertising.com for placing the ads there but, candidates should pay attention to where their ads are popping up. The internet is not like television; each site has a very specific audience and by advertising on a site, you are, in essence, trying to relate to that audience. This association can be very damaging to a candidate’s image if it is unsolicited and not remedied quickly. Luckily for Mitt Romney, Gay.com didn’t want this association any more than I’m sure Romney would have wanted it and, subsequently, took down the ad themselves.
However, the candidate might not be so lucky next time.
