Obama Targets Young Voters With Online Video Game Ads
Posted on: Thursday, 16 October 2008, 15:45 CDT
Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama is using his campaign’s deep pockets to step up his advertising during the final weeks before the November 4 election, and is making political history by becoming the first presidential candidate to place ads in online video games.
The ads will be featured in 18 games on Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, ranging from "The Incredible Hulk" and "Guitar Hero 3" to sports titles like "NASCAR 09," "NBA Live 08" and "NFL Tour." The campaign will use the ads to promote the Illinois senator’s online voter registration and early balloting initiative in 10 battleground states, said a campaign spokesman.
The unprecedented presidential video ads will primarily target young adult males, who are often difficult to reach with conventional campaign advertising.
"The 18-to-34-year-old male is the mainstream demographic for the hard-core video gamer," Van Baker, an analyst for technology research firm Gartner Inc., told Reuters.
"They're hard to get to because they don't watch much TV and they don't read a lot, so it's a good venue to get that segment."
Polls of younger voters consistently place Obama ahead of rival Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain.
The video ads, which appear as images of Obama in the games’ banners or billboards, carry the slogan "Early voting has begun". They also refer players to senator Obama’s VoteForChange.com website, which allows users to register online to vote, find a polling location and obtain absentee voter information.
The campaign’s move to online video ads does not mean, however, that they have turned away from more traditional media. Indeed, the Obama campaign announced last week that it would purchase a 30-minute prime-time slot on October 29 on the CBS and NBC broadcast networks, during which senator Obama will make his pitch to voters. The ads are believed to have cost the campaign roughly $1 million each.
Although such long-form ads were fairly common in the 1950s and ‘60s, Mr. Obama’s will be the first paid political telecast of national scale since Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign. Those ads drew an average audience of 11.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
In contrast to national telecasts, Mr. Obama's video game ads will be aimed at precisely targeted groups of potential voters. For example, the campaign can target specific geographic areas of the country through the Internet Protocol addresses registered with Internet service providers when players go online with their Xbox 360 consoles, said Baker.
The video game ads are targeted at 10 critical states where early voting is available and relatively straightforward, including Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.
"These ads will help us expand the reach of VoteForChange.com, so that more people can use this easy tool to find their early vote location and make sure their voice is heard," Nick Shapiro, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, told Reuters.
So far, roughly 5 million people have visited Mr. Obama’s VoteForChange.com Web site since its unveiling on August 25. More than 774,000 have downloaded a voter registration form from the site, according to the campaign.
The Obama campaign also began placing nationwide ‘VoteForChange’ ads on Facebook pages earlier this month.
The campaign’s innovative use of interactive media is made possible, in part, by Mr. Obama’s substantial funding advantage over senator McCain, who is limited to $84 million in public money. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama raised a record $67 million in August and is expected to bring in another $100 million for September, according to a Washington Post report. Ads for senator Obama have outpaced those for senator McCain by a factor of 8 in some states, the report said.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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