The most popular political weblogs have been able to support their publishers through an intermediary called Blogads. As this election season heated up, most of the top sites saw extreme traffic spikes and have been able to set lucrative- but- competitive prices for ad views (not clickthrough) on their sites.

The final tally is still being compiled, but Evan Tracy of CMAG released his preliminary analysis of cross-media spending during the 2004 campaign at the 5th Annual eVoter Institute Conference this week. You can read some of the results in the latest CMAG Findings Memo.

According to Tracy, over $1.75 billion was spent this year across all media -- television, radio, print, and online. The campaigns accounted for 48% of the total and the parties picked up 27%. The remaining 25% was spent on local races and ballot initiatives.

Despite tremendous growth over 2000, online spending hardly made a dent:

Television - 91.2%
Radio - 5.1%
Newspaper - 2.9%
Internet - .9%

Perhaps more important than the actual amount spent was an understanding of why so little was allocated to the web. The consensus: old white men. The group agreed that until older traditional political consultants retire, television will remain the most important -- and for many, the only -- medium that matters. Looks like we've got our work cut out for us.

According to Daily Caucus, Senator-elect John Thune of South Dakota paid two bloggers, Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek, $35,000 over a five month period:

Nowhere on [the] "Daschle v. Thune" [weblog] was there a disclaimer that he was being paid $5,200 per month by a candidate.... These guys spent every day attacking Daschle and promoting the "Rock Star" Thune. They had perfect timing on issues like the last minute Daschle lawsuit. How could they have known? Because Dick Wadhams had hired them! Lauck admitted that he had access to information he wouldn't have otherwise.

Has Blogads finally met its match? BURST! Media, an online advertising network composed of niche content sites, announced today that it has formed a network of blogs on which companies can place ads. BURST! has taken an entirely different approach than Blogads. For example, BURST!

- sells on a CPM rather than a flat fee;
- allows advertisers to run rich media creative;
- follows the lead of Drudge in offering pop-ups;
- allows for geographical targeting; and
- generally offers a wider variety of ad sizes, placements, and sponsorships on each blog.

The initial impact of BURST!'s network will likely be minimal. They have only 20 blogs in their network -- although it counts Gawker Media as a member -- and political advertisers are more likely to stick to the inexpensive, flat fee Blogad model vs. expensive CPMs and minimum spend requirements.

While this blogger has suggested a few improvements to the Blogads product, many of which have been incorporated into BURST!'s offering, the jury is still out on which ad model will ultimately generate the most revenue.

A lot has been written about the effectives of the Bush and Kerry Internet strategies, including details of money raised, volunteers recruited, and votes won using the Web. However, information about specific online advertising strategies has yet to be released by either side.

Addressing this concern, MSHC Partners has published details about the online ad campaigns conducted by John Kerry and the Democratic National Committee. [Full disclosure, I work at MSHC and helped direct the Kerry and DNC online ad strategies. From this point forward, I’m just going to write in the first person.]

The purpose of releasing this information is simple: to educate the political community about the effectiveness of online marketing. Continuity of key learnings has always been a challenge to all those who have worked in and around political campaigns. Campaigns shut down after elections and little is done to preserve information about the strategies that worked (and didn't work) best.

Eric Porres from Pericles Consulting wrote yesterday in iMediaConnection an overview of his experience as the online media buyer for George Bush and the National Republican Senatorial Committee...two organizations I used to deal with when working at America Online.

In part one of his article -- the rest to be published next week -- Porres tackles two problems he experienced. As a media buyer for numerous Democratic candidates, I agree with his first point, but take issue with his second.

1. Making the medium scalable
Eric here is actually addressing a problem that the entire online advertising industry faces. Scalability.

Take a look at any three websites today. Doesn’t matter which three. Now…pay attention to the ads. How big they are, where they’re located on the page, how long they animate for, etc.

Eric Porres’ second article on the challenges online political ad buyers face was published today in iMediaConnection. The first part was discussed on PDF last week.

In this portion of his three-part exploration, Eric addresses some of the issues surrounding contracts between online media buyers and website publishers. The piece, which focuses on “Insertion Orders, Terms & Conditions and Delivery Guarantees” is broken down into three parts, two worthy of debate: (1) pre-payment and (2) make-goods for under-delivery.

1. Pre-Payment
Eric points out that there is no law governing payment of political advertising, either online or off. As a result, media outlets are entitled to set their own rules regarding payment terms. For a variety of reasons, publishers decided to force political advertisers to pre-pay for their ad campaigns.

Breaking News! It snowed in Moscow this week.

Ok - that isn't really big news. After all, winter in Russia is notorious for being cold and snowy. But apparently the weather forecasters hadn't predicted snow, so it took everyone by surprise. In response, the mayor of Moscow has suggested that weather forecasters should be fined for getting their forecasts wrong (CNN).

On a related note, did you know that WeatherBug has a blog? It was launched to address customer concerns and to offer insight into the weather gathering and weather reporting process. It ended up as a storm tracker (and doesn't seem to have been updated since September).

UPDATE: Steve Rubel pointed me to the updated URL for the WeatherBug Blog -- it is in fact updated regularly.

So, when politicians promise one thing, and do something else, should we have the right to fine them? Or maybe we have stumbled onto the argument for why campaigns, or better yet, government, should blog. Politicans make the argument that they can't always be held to a promise they made during their political campaign because the reality of government (budget crises, divided legislature, etc.) have changed the situation. But if they blogged, then they could address constituent concerns and explain the political process - you know, how it really works.

Via Donkey Rising, via Daily Kos, I see that Political Strategy has re-published Frank Luntz's "Republican Playbook" in a full-text searchable and otherwise easily accessible format.

This story's a couple weeks old, but still relevant to PDF's mission to understand how technology can affect political action. A DC-based public affairs consulting outfit, Rock Creek Creative, boldly touted a website they built for the February 2004 "Ukraine in Europe and the World" conference as "the virtual freedom plaza for the democracy movement" during Ukraine's recent Orange Revolution. The day after putting out this ballsy press release, the firm hit the PR wires again, this time with their proverbial tails between their legs, essentially toning down their initial self-glorification.

It's obvious that RCC screwed up royally by exaggerating their role in the country's political about-face. However, is there something to be considered beyond that? I guess my question is, could a website have spurred, or facilitated, the revolution the way RCC claimed its Ukraine in Europe site did? And more important, where is the line drawn between virtual promotion and organization of such a movement and actual physical action? Afterall, no matter how many people may have been rising-up virtually, Putin's puppet would be in power today if it weren't for the droves of frustrated Ukrainians camping out in Kiev and demanding change.