DoubleClick, a leading service provider in the digital/online advertising world, has just published an analysis of response patterns to 301 online ad campaigns running June to September 2006.

The bottomline is hugely important for marketers of candidates:

Video ads generate at least twice the response (as measured by click throughs) as standard image (JPG or GIF) ads.

In fact, when all forms of interaction with video ads are included, about 8% of all video ad impressions delivered in the study generated some interaction (2.7 billion video and image ad impressions were studied).

Actual click-through rates range from 0.4% to 0.74% for video ads, as compared to 0.1% to 0.2% for image ads.

The "bad" news is that online videos are short, short, short. The typical :30 second online video is actually viewed an average of 19 seconds, while :15 second videos are viewed an average of 10 seconds.

Not a lot of time for meaningful dialogue in the first instance! But remember, a key purpose of the online video is to trigger the click-through ... from there your candidate can "take the floor" with a more substantial presentation.

The Agitator has been monitoring the e-mail communications of all the Presidential candidates for the past two months. So far, we've been surprised at how little video messaging we've received, specifically in the context of fundraising.

The typical use of video in e-mails has been to recycle video footage of candidate appearances on mainstream TV (e.g. Biden on Leno, McCain on Letterman) or to present recycled or live key campaign speeches and appearances (e.g., all the Dems posted their performances before the DNC Winter Meeting, McCain and others holding online town hall meetings, announcing their candidacies, etc.).

Only rarely have we encountered video-driven fundraising appeals (e.g., pitch for Hillary by Bill, John Edwards capitalizing on Ann Coulter's bigoted comments to the American Conservative Union).

Just for starters, it seems to us that a simple no-brainer would be to use a video thank-you and upsell (to a monthly contribution), directly from the candidate, as the standard default communication after each one-time online donation (including any generated by presence on YouTube, MySpace, etc).

Direct mail fundraisers get fired if they don't exploit the "acknowledgement" process!

We'll have more to report after the March "close-out" of the campaign fundraising reports on our ongoing "content analysis" of candidates' e-mail communications.