The Election, Poltical Ad Spend & AdSense

This morning, I was notified by friends and blog readers of political ads running on my site ... it's happened quite frequently over the last few months and I've gone to Google to put out each small fire using their competitive ad filter (which, by nature, is a reactive process). This time, I got an ad supporting "Yes on Prop 8" - which is already highly controversial and certainly nothing I would place on my blog (which I work hard to maintain as politically neutral and tech / web / mobile focused):

I am frustrated that Google doesn't have a meta-filter for ad categories that are political in nature (for instance)... asking me to block domain after domain is not particularly easy or effective.

Furthermore, I was asked by a specific ad-network (Forbes) to run this ad last week at premium CPMs (likely higher than what Google would pay) - and I declined. So you can imagine my frustration that the ads run DESPITE my prior decline at higher ad rates.

Update: TechCrunch just wrote about this exact topic... and the same ads. Glad to know others are also unhappy

Who Won the VP Debate? Ask Google

America tuned into watch Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden... and now they are turning to Google to ask, "who won the vp debate?" According to Google Hot Trends - t's the #1 search query on Google. The results, however, are far from satisfying and prove just how difficult indexing - and more importantly, ranking - fresh content from the blogoshpere and media is. Proof: If you are asking who won the debate, the best results likely were published after the debate. Right? Well here's a breakdown of the seven suggested sources:

- two articles published at 11am pst... long before the debate occurred - two articles from big media companies (Forbes and iReport) that are asking for user commentary - one AdSense affiliate reposting the top search queries - two timely critiques of the actual debate: one from WSJ and one from RightPundits

Determining the 2008 Election Winner Based on Web Traffic - Mitt Romney & Barack Obama?

Can web traffic and data determine the likely outcome of the 2008 election primaries? I put each of the major candidates through Quantcast and the results are quite revealing. The charts below are estimated 'unique users per month' and it should be on an apples-to-apples basis because none of these candidates are truly web 2.0 / dorky enough to actually 'Quantify' their websites. If you look at both the aggregate numbers and the traffic growth, the results are pretty phenomenal. Mitt Romney, for instance, has seen significant, rapid growth while Hilary Clinton has the largest aggregate numbers - but her traffic is actually declining.

Ron Paul is famous for his web popularity (just read the front page of Digg at any given moment) - and that translates into larger overall numbers than Romney, but his traffic is steadily growing while Mitt's is surging.

The biggest surprise is Hilary Clinton - clearly she has the biggest brand name, but to have declining traffic during the primary season is an awful indicator!

Mitt Romney

Ron Paul

John McCain

Hilary Clinton

Barack Obama