Web Video for Political Campaigns with YouTube Insight

This guest post was written by Nathan Babcock of Run Smart 2 Win.

“More people watched more video on YouTube last week than watched the top ten shows on network television.” (Seth Godin, Meatball Sundae)

For local campaigns on a shoestring budget, how valuable is a television spot…accessible to the entire globe?  How about a free spot?!

If it sounds good (and it should), then it’s time to take your campaign to the airwaves on YouTube.  More specifically, it’s time to use YouTube Insight to target video messages to the voters and volunteers you need to reach, test the effectiveness of your spots, and fine-tune your campaign’s message to achieve ultimate victory.  Think about the level of detail and strategic value a high-priced media consulting firm would give you for your 30-second TV spot — suggestions for improving your campaign’s message, theme, delivery, and numerous other factors — all supported with empirical data from expensive focus groups, polls, and field tests.

Now imagine those benefits in real-time — continuously updated throughout the campaign — free of charge.

That’s what you get for your online campaign videos with YouTube Insight. Here is the introduction to YouTube Insight last year on the Google Blog:

“…uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.”

Here are a few sample charts from a video I posted to YouTube:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can drill-down into each chart, focusing on a particular geographic area if you so choose (e.g. a state or congressional district) or other factors. You can also look at:

• How people found your video (through a direct link, a search, an embedded video, etc.)
• Who is talking about the video through comments (and their demographic information, of course)
• And how popular the video has been over time

Do you remember Frank Luntz interviewing focus groups of swing voters during the ’08 campaign, analyzing their positive or negative feelings towards candidates and their commercials using hand-held electronic dials? YouTube Insight offers that as well in a feature called Hot Spots:

“The ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again. Audience attention score is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience’s attention, compared to videos of a similar length.”

If you’re not sold yet on YouTube Insight — or YouTube, for that matter — consider that more people watched YouTube last week than the top ten shows on television combined. Also, consider that many media outlets air campaign ads that are created and uploaded to YouTube. This is free advertising.

The winning campaigns of 2010 and beyond will be the campaigns that utilize the power of online video (of which YouTube is the undisputed king) — and understand the campaign messages and delivery methods that are working through YouTube Insight.

For more information on YouTube Insight, visit the Google Blog and watch this instructional video.

Related Political Campaign & Local Election Strategies:

1. YouTube Political Campaign Videos for Local Elections
2. Funny Online Video Clips of Fighting Politicians
3. Using Social Media to Win Your Political Campaign
4. Triple Your Political Campaign Volunteer Base With Facebook
5. Political Campaigns & Local Elections: Become an Expert in Any Field