As usually happens on these types of panels, there are some who like to take the discussion toward a debate of whether or not online engagement can fully replace traditional engagement tools (TV, radio, direct mail, “on the ground” grassroots, etc.)

While I think there are some cases in which online engagement can replace some of the traditional tools (especially in small or under-funded campaigns), the fact is that the media “pie” hasn’t gotten smaller — it’s just being divided up into smaller pieces.

There are more people watching video and getting their news online, and less people getting it off the television. Television viewership itself has become more fragmented, as broadcast news has taken a dip while cable news has risen. Radio is struggling in several markets, and I’ve heard some consultants tell me it’s harder to reach voters cost-effectively through direct mail.

Let me be clear: I think broadcast media and direct mail are effective.

But … putting all your eggs in one media basket in this age of increasing media fragmentation is a mistake.

Can campaigns win solely focusing on broadcast media and/or direct mail? Yes (for now.)

They are, however, missing a huge opportunity to truly engage voters online. Perhaps by engaging them online (more cost-effectively) they can actually spend less money on the traditional tools, with greater results.

We prefer the latter, and believe this long-term relationship building is the true strength of online communications.

Anybody can press a button and blast out a message.  And there are a lot of consultants out there making a pretty penny off broadcast-model-tactics-based programs that have their clients pay for formulaic, short-term bursts of activity that do little more than blast out impressions and messages.

We choose a different path and believe in the strength of integrated, outcomes-focused campaigns that allow you to build long-term relationships with hundreds/thousands/millions of people in the areas that matter most to you.

To do this requires five steps that are fully intertwined and occurring simultaneously:

• Develop Online Messaging
• Take Message Public: Creating the Narrative
• Engaging Voters
• Creating/Identifying Advocates
• Mobilizing Activists

To simply explain how this works, I’ll share the metaphor of a restaurant owner:

• A restaurant owner opens up shop and then develops and runs ads to tell the story of his restaurant and build awareness.
• A customer becomes engaged when he or she comes in and eats at the restaurant.
• If the customer likes the food, the ambiance and the friendly wait staff, he or she will come back again and again — allowing the restaurant to identify that person as a potential “advocate” of the operation.
• The restaurant then can use a variety of tactics (maybe its Yelp or Foursquare or Facebook) to provide that person with the incentive and tools (mobilizes) to advocate for the restaurant — by spreading the word to his/her network and recommending the restaurant.

Too many consultants focus on the last step — mobilizing current advocates — without the continuous outreach and education for which we strive. It is, in fact, this continuous outreach and education that makes effective advocacy campaigns unique and powerful.  The key is not only finding those already passionate and asking them to advocate — it is reaching the undecideds and converting them into advocates.

Online tools allow you to build programs that work like an ongoing machine to constantly find interested audiences, educate them via your point of view, get believers to become advocates, and constantly generate supporters between the campaign’s launch and the end date.

Don’t just broadcast.  Don’t just deliver messages.  Start building relationships.

As a simple comparison to help us make our point, we use the example of online advertising vs. direct mail.

Here’s our simple answer: You can do it online for $50,000, or via direct mail for $250,000.

It’s important to realize that when we say “have your message read 200,000 times” — we aren’t talking about simple ad impressions, or pieces of direct mail.  While these impressions have value, they represent more cost than value.  What we are talking about are actual engagements.  Not just an exposure, but people who actually read your message.

After all, that is what issue-advertising is all about.

We recently completed an online ad campaign in which we spent about $40,000 to deliver slightly more than 4 million impressions.  For the purposes of our comparison, let’s equate those 4 million impressions with 4 million direct mail pieces.

Now, out of those 4 million direct mail pieces — how many people do you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, picked up your direct mail piece and read it?

Unfortunately, you don’t.  With direct mail, you can certainly measure how many pieces you mail, but you can only guess at how many people are actually “engaging” with your mail pieces.

Not so with online advertising.  For our recent campaign, out of those 4 million impressions, we had 202,000 engagements with our ads.  These were expandable, rich media ads — so what this means is that the ad was scrolled over, expanded and read/reviewed more than 200,000 times.

Further, we know how long people engaged with the ad overall — as well as what links they clicked in the ad, and how long they interacted with specific ad panels/features.

So, how much did it cost?  About $40,000.

How much would it cost to get the same amount engagements (202,000) through direct mail?  $250,000.  Here’s how we figure that:

If we liberally estimate direct mail readership at 20% and conservatively averaged the cost per mailer at 50 cents each (includes list, design, print and postage).  To generate 100,000 readers, he would send 500,000 pieces at a cost of $250,000.

Bottom line: Online provided comparable results for 84% less money.  Additional benefits to online include 1) real measurement 2) give interested audiences an immediate gateway to get more involved 3) ability to make changes during the campaign.

The bottom line:  anyone can know the cost of an issue campaign.  But being able to quantify the value and cost savings is what professionals do for their clients.

Our firm specializes in designing and placing expandable ad units that measure engagement levels.  We target political audiences from both parties and the large and undecided group of fence sitters in the middle.  We place tens of millions of impressions;  use cutting edge targeting;  designs for effect;  optimize and measure — and deliver results.

And, by results, we mean actual engagements — not just impressions.

So, given the fact that this was the average rate — there were some ads that performed better, and some that performed more poorly.

After reading this article, I looked at the Facebook ad reports for our various clients over the past year.  Yes, some of the ads performed worse than .051% — and some performed much better.  The difference really depended on the type of client/service/product we were advertising — and the demographic or region to which we were targeting our ads.

In short, I don’t buy the premise that Facebook ads are generally a waste.  I know that when we target our ads and test graphics/interests/ad copy, we can perform much better than the average.

I also know that many Facebook advertisers out there are obviously not targeting (which is why I see liberal causes advertising on Republican profiles, and local Florida politicians advertising on Illinois profiles).

Further, while I agree that engagement (clicks, in the case of Facebook ads) is the first priority, I also believe there is inherent value in the repetition of ad impressions.

So, don’t let the headline of this new report scare you away from Facebook ads.  It will remain an integral tool in our online communications toolbelt — as it should for you.

Boy, have we heard that line before.  I’m willing to bet you have, too.

Believe it or not, there is still a misconception that online communication is only effective if you’re targeting young voters or consumers.  There’s only one problem with that assertion:  it’s wrong.

There is a growing body of evidence that shows older segments of the population are the fastest-growing group of online users.  Just this past week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new report that shows that older users are outpacing Millenials in social networking growth:

While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.

Millenials are also getting beat by the older Generation X in terms of diversity of online use, as Gen X’ers (age 34-45) are more likely to engage in several online activities, “including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.”  That may be of particular interest to financial services companies and political campaigns.

So, the Web isn’t just for kids anymore — and if you want to target Americans of all ages, your best, most cost-effective bet is doing it online.

In our humble opinion, it’s the most valuable storytelling tool out there.

The most recent comScore U.S. Online Video Rankings shows why — namely, the sheer, massive amount of Americans who are tuning in to online video.

172 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in nearly 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

That’s a lot of people.  And a lot of video.

As a company that also builds successful online video advertising campaigns for our clients, we were also pleased by this statistic:

Americans viewed more than 5.4 billion video ads in November … Video ads reached 49 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 36.8 times during the month.

Newspaper consumption is declining.  Viewership of network news is on the downswing.

But online video keeps rising.  Are you taking advantage of it?

In 2010, we provided strategic consulting services for the Will County Circuit Court campaign of Judge Michael J. Powers.  Will County is the fastest-growing county in suburban Chicago and one of the key “swing” regions in the state of Illinois.

Normally, winning judicial candidates receive far less votes than those at the “top of the ballot.”  In this election, however, Judge Powers received more votes in Will County than any other candidate.  That includes higher-profile candidates for U.S. Senate, Governor and Congress.

How did we do it?  Simple:  we focused on efficiency and engaged a robust, groundbreaking online program.

• We went against the commonly accepted political tactics by spending more than 40% of our direct voter contact budget for online communication.  We built a targeted email list of more than 25,000 Republican and Independent voters in Will County, and delivered more than 350,000 emails to this list in the months and weeks leading up to Election Day.

• During the final three weeks of the campaign, we also delivered more than 2 million impressions of online, expandable, rich media ads (see graphics at top of this post) within Will County — and garnered more than 40,000 interactions with these ads.  That’s analogous to sending out 2 million direct mail pieces and knowing for a fact that 40,000 people opened and read your mail.

• Our interaction rate was almost 300 times better than the average “click-thru rate” garnered with standard, static banner ads delivered by the vast majority of campaigns.

Quite impressive — and powerful.

We also built a network of activists on Facebook — delivering content and tools that kept these activists engaged.  We also delivered more than 7 million impressions of Facebook ads to a targeted group of voters in the district.

Through email and Facebook, we also deployed a number of tools — including “E-Yard Signs” and a Facebook app that allowed people to share these signs with Facebook friends — designed to empower our activists to evangelize on behalf of our campaign.

In the final weeks of the campaign, we also filmed short “endorsement” videos from local opinion leaders and shared them via Facebook and email, with clear calls to action for our network to share with their friends, family and colleagues.

To be sure, the campaign also engaged in more traditional means of communication, such as door-to-door campaigning and direct mail.  We limited these activities, however, to a very targeted universe of likely voters and favored repetition of message (quality vs. quantity).

All of the above resulted in an efficient campaign that that elected Judge Michael J. Powers to the Will County Circuit Court.

During the last three weeks of these campaigns, we delivered 12.6 million impressions of online, expandable, rich-media ads.  These ads garnered more than 448,000 interactions.

So, if you compared it to a traditional direct mail campaign, it would be analogous to sending out 12.6 million direct mail pieces and knowing that the piece was opened and read 448,000 times.

Further, our 3.8% interaction rate beats the industry average (3.45%) and is almost 400 times better than the “click-thru rates” of standard, static banner ads.

Following is a breakdown of highlights of each of these campaigns:

Mark Kirk for U.S. Senate

• Delivered 7.6 million emails to targeted voters in suburban Chicago during last three weeks of campaign.
• Delivered 7.6 million impressions of online, expandable, rich media ads. (Click here to view example).
• Garnered 218,000 interactions with those ads.

Bobby Schilling for U.S. Congress

• Deployed 159,000 emails to targeted voters in district during last three weeks of campaign.
• Delivered 4 million impressions of online, expandable, rich media ads. (Click here to view example).
• Garnered 202,000 interactions with our ads.

Randy Hultgren for U.S. Congress

• Deployed 75,000 emails to targeted voters in district during last three weeks of campaign.
• Delivered 861,000 impressions of online, expandable, rich media ads. (Click here to view example).
• Garnered 29,000 interactions with our ads.

This ad is up and geo-targeted into a Congressional District here in Illinois.  We’re halfway through the ad campaign, and so far we have the following results:

• We’ve delivered 600,000 impressions of the ad.
• 91,000 people have interacted with the ad.

So, what does this mean?  Simple — compare the 600,000 impressions to, say, a total amount of direct mail pieces sent out by a campaign.  Or the total amount of times a TV ad runs on television.

What you don’t know about a direct mail piece or a TV ad, however, is how many people actually read the mail piece before tossing it in the trash, or how many people sat and watched your commercial without getting up for a bathroom or snack break.

But with online ads — we know that 91,000 people cared enough about the ad to interact with it.  They scrolled their cursor over the ad and read more about the candidate.

To put it in other words (hat tip to our media buyer, Chandler Howell, for using this analogy) … having 91,000 people interact with your ad is like having the undivided attention of a professional football stadium full of fans to deliver your message.

You simply can’t measure that with TV or direct mail.

We’ll share some more case studies after Election Day.  But these initial results show the power of online video.

The four candidates at the top of the ticket have reached almost 425,000 people via the Internet–enough to populate Illinois’ three biggest cities outside of Chicago. Kirk’s video viewers alone would constitute Illinois’ second biggest city; he and Quinn have substantial leads on their opponents in terms of Internet viewership.

It is a large market to tap into and one that professor Max Dawson of Northwestern University’s School of Communication says could revolutionize the output of campaign press.

“This new platform allows for more targeted messaging, more immediate messaging and it allows messages to be customized to an audience,” he said “Uploading is free, less costly allow candid to blanket the public with the platform and reach out to young people.”

The targeted messaging allows candidates to respond to the news of the day quickly or highlight nuances of the campaign that may not seem important enough for statewide airtime. When, for example, legendary Bears Coach and self-described conservative Mike Ditka endorsed Gov. Quinn, the campaign released the announcement on Youtube.

Still think online video can’t boost your organization or campaign?

Well, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new study today that backs me up.

In summary, this report, Older Adults and Social Media, finds:

• Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled—from 22% to 42% over the past year.
• Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.
• One in ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one in twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.
• Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.

The important thing to realize is that email remains king with this older demographic.  Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day.

What this means is that a balanced communications program is vital to reaching older Americans — one that relies on email as a foundation, but doesn’t ignore social networking sites.

The amount of older adults on these sites has absolutely exploded during the past 12 months — and will no doubt continue to do so in the months and weeks to come.  Are you tailoring your communications plan to reach this demographic?

Just take a look at comScore’s latest online video viewership report for July:

• Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers.
• Facebook jumped one position to capture the #3 spot with 46.6 million viewers.
• Of the 178 million U.S. Internet users who watched online video content during the month, also viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July.
• Leading the pack with 783 million ad impressions was Hulu.
• Hulu was followed closely behind by the Tremor Media Video Network at 451.8 million, and the Brightroll Video Network at 248.4 million ad impressions.
• Online video ads reached 27 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 44.5 times during the month.

Online video is single-handedly changing how we get our news, weather, favorite shows, and entertainment. The advertising potential is enormous, and the impact is bigger still.

With 89% of Internet users consuming online video, it is essential to incorporate this valuable tool in your modern communications arsenal.

It appears, according to this MediaPost piece, that this political ad rule of thumb is set to rise:

This year’s political ad spending could be up between 5% and 10% from 2008 levels, spurred by the Supreme Court’s recent favorable ruling on corporate political spending. Although as much as 75% of political ad dollars are spent on local TV, more of it in the future will be diffused to online, mobile and other new media.

The slow, secular shift away from measured media to marketing services, TV’s gradual disintermediation by Internet-connected media, and the movement toward more a la carte, on-demand video are among the wild cards. All will play havoc with once predictable advertiser spending, even in election years, analysts say.

This shift tracks with the poll results we’re seeing that show media consumption among voters is increasingly fragmented.

While broadcast is still king — its rein is much more tenuous than it was even a year or two ago.  Voters are increasingly getting their news online, and our ability to hyper-target these voters makes online advertising an increasingly wise and effective investment.

In this post over on my personal blog, I provide my take — that it’s a good communications move.

What are your thoughts?

So as I drove to Midway Airport earlier this week, I started actually paying attention to the billboards. And my thoughts immediate turned to Facebook ads.

Let me explain why …

From past experience, I know that billboards in the Chicago area can run anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 per month, depending on location.  So, let’s use a nice round average of $10,000 per month.

Now, let’s say you’re a car dealer paying this amount every month to have a billboard on I-55 going into Chicago (there are a lot of new car ads.)  That’s $10,000 a month to advertise to a large audience — most of whom are not in the market for a new car and may not be for a while, and many of whom do not reside/shop in the region or live out-of-state.

Bottom line — that’s a lot of money for a shotgun approach at advertising to a lot of people who may never purchase your product.

So … what if these car dealerships started spending their money on Facebook ads instead of billboards?

I decided to run the numbers.

First, a quick Google search turned up the following demographics of the average purchaser of a new SUV:

• Young married couples (30-35).
• Medium family income $60,000
• Over 50% female buyers

So, I decided to enter those  demographics into the Facebook ad manager for the city of Joliet, IL (near where I live.)  The results should be of interest to any Joliet-area car dealer currently wasting $10,000 a month on highway billboards….

For a mere $50 a day, using the car buyer demographics listed above, a Joliet car dealer could expect to reach a total Facebook audience of about 119,000 women right in their city — and receive 66 click-thrus a day from that audience. That’s just over 2,000 click-thrus a day from a targeted demographic of local consumers who are actually choosing to view your new car ads — for a total cost of about $1,500 per month.

Of those 2,040 people who click on the ads, how many will actually purchase a car?  Hard to say — but are car dealers currently tracking the return on their $10,000 a month investment?  Hardly.

To me, it seems like a no-brainer.  And it doesn’t just apply to Facebook ads.

I used the above example during my presentation yesterday to the U.S. Chamber Regional Government Affairs Conference in San Francisco.  I used the car dealer example — but then asked the audience if they could do the same to target Facebook users by political preference, demographics and keywords to take action on specific policy issues.

The uses are endless, really.

Is this post meant as a cheap ad for Facebook?  No — new online tools such as these are popping up all the time.  We’ve used keyword ads on Google and MSN in the past with good success.

My point is that online tools are changing the way people consumer their news, information and, yes, ads.  We now have the ability to target ads as never before.

And, in a tough economy, that can be hte difference between $10,000 a month for billboards — or $1,500 a month on ads that might actually work.

With big contributions from search and mobile, combined with continuing shifts in spending away from traditional ad channels by marketers, WPP’s GroupM is projecting that global Internet spending will surge 11% next year to almost $65 billion and account for nearly 15% of all measured media. By comparison, global spending in the sector this year will garner a 13 percent share of measured media.

What about here in the U.S.?

In the U.S., digital advertising is expected to climb 7 percent next year to $24.4 billion, grabbing a 17 percent share of total spending, compared to 15.4 percent in 2009, according to the report. Most of the U.S. growth will be driven by search and video, which compensates for declines in Internet display advertising and sponsorships. The report also indicates that much of the U.S. growth will be fueled by sharp declines in traditional print advertising, particularly newspapers.

Where are you spending your ad dollars these days?  And, more important, where are you getting the most return-on-investment?