Election Day: Political Ads on Google; Who Do Googlers Support?

The Rimm-Kaufman Group did a study of political ads appearing in search results for names of Senate candidates. Using Firefox with cookies disabled, they found very few political ads on Google and none on Yahoo. Other findings:

• There are few political advertisers: the average search results page for queries in this study returned only 3.7 ads.
• The most prevalent advertisers within this query set were Accoona (search engine), Gather.com (social networking), CafePress (retailer), and GOPSenators.com (National Republican Senatorial Committee).
• "Red" ads (pro-Republican or anti-Democrat) outnumbered "blue ads" (pro-Democrat or anti-Republican) two-to-one.
• Blue ads were three times more likely to be negative than red ads.

They speculate that the 2008 election will see significantly more political ads as the market matures and political advertisers get more sophisticated.

In related news, it looks like Googlers predominantly support Democrats.

Two years ago, Googlers gave $130,000 to various Democratic presidential candidates and the party. This year, they gave over $255,000 to the same. The biggest earner in 2004 was John Kerry, with over $80,000; this year he got $363.

Two years ago, Googlers gave $3,250 to re-elect the President. This year, they gave George W. Bush no money, but gave other Republicans $5,200.

[via]

Labels: Technology

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Election Day: Political Ads on Google; Who Do Googlers Support?