Adwords for Elections

While doing a search for results on the American election this evening, I came across this… lets call it “decent” ad for the Labour party.

Being the advertising nerd that I am sometimes, I was rather amused by this idea and decided to see what other party’s had going in terms of their Google Adwords. However after trying many different combinations of searches, I came across nothing for the National party. Zero.

Even with a blatant search for “National Party” the only thing I got was natural search results. This I found very strange. Now I know most people don’t really care about the New Zealand elections, I for one don’t know the difference between Labour or National, but I would have thought at least they would have cared, right?

This then got me to thinking about what could be achieved with a little bit of Adwords knowledge and a couple dollars a day for your online budget. How easy would it be for lets say, an opposing party to steal some keywords from another? Lets find out.

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Just incase you can’t interpret this table, it means for about one dollar a day, you could either feed a small African child, or own New Zealand’s major parties in positions 1 – 3 on Google. What I find even scarier is how easy it is to take personal shots

Click here for a larger version.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I were running for Prime Minister this close to an election I would be buying up every single keyword related to my opposition, including any combination I could think of, especially when you consider Obama and McCain keywords will cost you around $500 – $800 a day.

Mr Key – I’m not your biggest fan, but if you’re looking for an online strategy over the next few days hit me up, I’ll do you a deal. We can start with the following…