April 10th Panel Discussion: Online Political Advertising in the 2008 Elections

With Obama campaign staff reporting a “ridiculously” high Return On Investment for list-building search ads and Google giving Grants to nonprofit advocacy groups like a crack dealer handing out freebies in a new territory (and for much the same reason?), contextual/behavioral advertising seems like it’s come to the political world to stay. But most advocacy groups have limited experience with buying, targeting and testing political search ads, and many others are reluctant to even try them out for a variety of reasons ranging from past poor performance from online display ads to pure philosophical discomfort.

Up comes a chance to learn more: on April 10th, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is sponsoring a panel discussion hosted by ClickZ’s Kate Kaye covering the lessons we can learn about “behavioral” advertising (in this case: search and contextual ads, or basically Google Ads) from their use in the 2008 elections. This event was originally scheduled for March but had to be postponed, and in the meantime e.politics has somehow managed to sneak aboard the panel. Should be interesting and informative, and it’s free to boot. Register here.

– cpd