Monday, April 21, 2008

Video Views

Presidential candidates see political video differently

By Denise de Murcie

As the presidential campaign has moved from state to state, waves of voters have been visiting campaign websites and watching videos of the candidates in the first presidential election that tests the online video decisions of campaign Internet strategists.

Internet video technology is developing at such as rapid pace all candidates have some catching up to do. But so far Sen. Barack Obama appears to be leading this contest.

Diginovations' Michael Kolowich, creator and manager of Mitt Romney's now-retired Internet TV channel, is most impressed with Barack Obama's Internet video site, believes that Sen. John McCain's campaign doesn't yet get the online video opportunity, and that Sen. Hillary Clinton falls somewhere between.

The Obama campaign built its channel on the platform from Brightcove Inc.; Kolowich used a competitor, PermissionTV Inc. -- both based in Massachusetts. These solutions have content management systems optimized for video that allow content publishers to present video clips through multiple players or playlists on their websites. At any time, the Obama channel administrator can quickly create new categories and reorganize clips to bring different content to the forefront. The Clinton and McCain campaigns, on the other hand, appear to be using older models, presenting videos in reverse chronological order, "with less depth of exploration and browsability" according to Kolowich.

With YouTube available to the candidates free, all are also uploading their videos to the popular video portal, some relying on it more than others. But Google Inc.'s YouTube is a double-edged sword, says Kolowich. Now that millions of voters have viewed political video on YouTube, Google is able to determine their political leanings and show them advertisements from opposing candidates, political action committees, and anyone else who wants to target those viewers, not just on YouTube but presumably throughout Google.

The average contribution associated with visits to a candidate's website is "astonishingly high," according to Kolowich. He won't disclose the number, but says it far exceeds the cost of developing and serving video, leading him to recommend doing everything possible to engage people with video on a candidate's own website. Kolowich used YouTube to generate leads, but to cultivate supporters he used Mitt TV.

No ad agency would question video's ability to create an emotional bond with viewers that can be persuasive. But the Clinton campaign is treating Internet video like traditional television content, which may be counterproductive. As Kolowich observes, much of their material is delivered direct-to-camera with a teleprompter and is highly produced, which may keep the senator's authenticity from showing through. Kolowich stresses that the big watchword of this campaign is authenticity: "Authenticity of the representations of the candidate from the campaign are really critical."

It's still early in the political video game. We have yet to see a video player with advanced marketing features for the presidential candidates. Players could, for example, drive contributions and signups directly from video clips and dynamically present targeted messages to audience subsets according to their geographic location or preference for particular topics. This would not preclude the campaigns from also loading up their videos to YouTube and other video portals.

In states with large broadband populations, a candidate could conceivably gain an advantage through sophisticated use of Internet video. It will be interesting to see how the party's presidential nominees use this strategic weapon.

Denise de Murcie's interview with Michael Kolowich is available as a podcast at http://www.high5video.com/2008/03/podcast-political-video.html

Denise de Murcie is a media consultant, Internet entrepreneur, and broadcast journalist. As a volunteer for Gov. Deval Patrick's campaign in 2006, she helped to launch his Internet TV Channel on the Brightcove platform. She also managed development of nonpolitical video channels while working at PermissionTV last year. The author can be reached at denise@high5video.com. Denise de Murcie's interview with Michael Kolowich is available as a podcast at http://www.high5video.com/2008/03/podcast-political-video.html