The Philippine Online Chronicles

The grass is greener on the other side of the digital divide, but not much attention has been given on the costs of online advertising, especially such campaigns for the benefit of political candidates. Taking off from the theme of previous posts "Politics in the Age of AdSense -- A View of the Political Campaign Landscape Online" and "Campaign Ads and Election Spending: Getting a Layman's Sense of the Spending," let's try to make a layman's overview of the election spending being made in relation to cyberspace.

Online advertising being a relatively new phenomenon, few comprehensive articles have been written to discuss in-depth the different modes of advertising in cyberspace altogether. Nonetheless, we can get a fair overview of the different online campaigns and discuss the costs involved by taking off from the Wikipedia article on online advertising, and taking due care to search for other and more authoritative sources where available.

Branding

Following good search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) practices ensures the high visibility of a candidate; however, if a candidate does not take into account the different brands (i.e., names, nicknames, search engine keywords) associated with him, the candidate could lose valuable visibility. Such is the reason why politicians should consider capturing as many of the popular domains and keywords that would be associated with his name; for instance, had Senator Francis Escudero continued his bid for the presidency, he would have wanted to claim domains like "chizescudero.com", "chizescudero.org", "chizescudero.net", "chiz2010.com", "chizescudero2010.com", and so on and so forth, having them redirect to his main website. Such would be a similar issue for microblogging accounts on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)and Plurk (http://www.plurk.com); administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro would do well to consider acquiring the accounts "@gilbertteodoro", "@giboteodoro", "@gibo2010", and so on.

It is not unknown for celebrities and corporations to purchase domain names and microblogging accounts that other people have created first; media giant CNN is rumored to have negotiated for the @cnnbrk account for USD 1M. The local scene has had its own set of domain name contests, with roughly similar results; the relatively-famous lawsuit between the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company and one Gerry Kaimo (involving a contest over the domain http://www.pldt.com) ended up in a settlement (a commenter on another blog post discussing the issue opined that the settlement had cost PLDT presumably P6.5 million) and provided no legal clarity over the issue of domain name and real-world name ownership. Fairly recently -- and without any resolution reported comprehensively by mainstream media -- was the fuss by vice-presidential candidate Loren Legarda over the domain http://www.lorenlegarda.com, which the owner apparently offered for sale at eighteen thousand euros.

As things stand, any person can create accounts involving the names of politicians, constraining candidates to purchase these domain names from their owners or forcing the candidates to bury these websites from search engine top views by marketing their political campaign domain names aggressively.

The costs are clear; while registering domain names and microblogging accounts are fairly inexpensive, at times even free, there likely exists an underground market with regard to online branding. It is not unlikely for a candidate to offer fairly large sums to acquire domain names related to their campaigns -- as those that they do not have any control over run the risk of being controlled by their rivals or detractors, and in the long run a one-time payment outweighs the cost of counter-SEO campaigns, let alone the cost of a lawsuit.

It is not unlikely that such transactions -- very likely unreceipted -- can range from tens of thousands to millions of pesos.

Webwork

Websites can be created by anyone with a computer and a decent internet connection, for the price of a smile and a handshake; however, well-designed webpages have been priced by independent web developers at about P20 thousand and upwards. Professional work, with websites designed towards high visibility -- optimized keywords, metadata, and suchlike, among others -- have been priced in the hundreds of thousands. Professionals and PR firms can be expected to provide receipts for such work; however, it is apparently common practice to include such expenses as part of the contract price and no longer itemize them. Not surprisingly, hiring SEO practitioners to optimize existing websites and provide coherence to online campaigns already costs a pretty sum; such expertise has been estimated to cost upwards of P50 thousand for three months worth of work, at least.

Online Advertising Campaigns

Apparently, the three most common ways to purchase online advertising space are cost per impression, cost per click (also pay per click), and cost per action. These are usually priced in terms of a base price for keywords, with the price increased by bids; candidates with smaller budgets for online advertising can be expected to lose out on ad visibility if their rivals bid higher for the target keywords. As such, candidates can be expected to pay from as low as five US dollars to several hundred dollars for each target keyword -- per day -- of the campaign; thus, a month of campaigning using online advertisements can run up to hundreds of thousands of pesos, especially if bid wars occur over keywords like "philippine president," "2010 elections," and so on.

It is not clear if the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will verify online advertising spending declared by candidates by requesting copies of receipts or statements from the candidates and firms like Google Adsense. What is clear, however, is that the spending has already begun, with popular websites already sporting infomercial and campaign advertisements; with candidates like Manny Villar seeming to corner the online ad market, it is likely that the bid wars are already being fought savagely in the background.

Online and Similar PR Campaigns

Attempting to make a distinction between online advertising and other PR campaigns, we now take a look at campaigns online that may be rife with unreceipted spending.

Forward-thinking PR firms have already been using blogger meet-ups and events to create online buzz for companies, products, and services, with a fair amount of success, despite the Filipino cybercommunity being relatively small in relation to the entire Philippine population. Without mentioning how the numbers were estimated, a PR practitioner has estimated that for as small as a P50 thousand cash-out, the resulting buzz can reach up to P2 million worth of exposure. It is therefore likely that PR firms will attempt to harness this phenomenon even more aggressively; fortunately, these are receipted expenses.

Unfortunately, it will be fairly easy to conceal the payment of online writers, in cash or kind, to blurb up candidates on their blogs. There have been rumblings in the local online community against such practices, but there is little in the way of actual evidence pointing to such occurrences; whether or not it is true, for instance, that a candidate has budgeted payoffs for bloggers remains an ugly, unsubstantiated rumor that many local bloggers condemn vehemently as an unethical practice -- no different from professional journalists condemning the "hao siao" among their ranks. It is likewise not difficult to conceal payments made to cyberdenizens to troll around cyberspace and leave comments on blogs, forums, Bulletin Board System (BBSs), and suchlike in support of their candidates.

E-mail marketing may be of even more effectiveness than some internet marketing methods, especially if the purported sender is of some influence or popularity, and with the Filipino penchant for siding with friends and family against all comers. Forwarded emails being a popular staple in the inboxes of the wired Pinoy, internet-savvy candidates may find it useful to tap their supporters or paid experts to circulate e-mails supporting their candidates -- or perform black propaganda against their rivals as part of their black-hat campaigns. Not dissimilar and probably fairly effective as well is the use of text spam, such as this propaganda against Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson reported by technogra.ph.

While it is not likely that such spending will reach in the range of hundred-thousands, as such amounts will become obvious and thus readily traceable to the candidate involved, the fact that such costs are likely to be unreceipted make such spending illegal.

Boon for the Black Hats

Even if the means mentioned above are not often classed as unethical practices, there is nonetheless much room for the online versions of political mudslinging. Apart from blogs and websites at their disposal, parodists and critics now have YouTube and other video websites to put up their criticisms of candidates, such as this video spoofing presidential candidate Manny Villar's "Akala Mo" campaign, created by parodist corruptcankissmyass:

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These methods, however nasty they can get, are often classed under protected speech and are thus considered to be protected by constitutional guarantee. However strident they are, they are far less sinister, far less unethical, than real black-hat campaigns.

Sufficiently sophisticated cyberdenizens can very well harness the internet and use successfully methods of online promotion to detract from a candidate's reputation or directly attack a candidate's online campaign -- an example of a black-hat campaign attacking US government websites here. While such campaigns have not yet appeared affecting online political campaigns of local candidates, it is perhaps prudent to anticipate that such black-hat attacks may be employed. DDOS attacks, emplacement of malware on rivals' sites, Googlebombing, creation of aggregators designed to attack personalities, black propaganda via email and text spamming, and other similar tactics have been employed by people with a fair amount of computer skills; it is not impossible that candidates may find themselves in a position to be desperate enough to do so.

Even more sinister would be that paying for black-hat campaigns are likely to be unreceipted.

Following the Money -- A Dicey Proposition Online

Current mainstream media reportage on campaign spending has been thin at best; as such, election spending for cyberspace promotions has largely been ignored, even as PR practitioners and SEO experts have estimated "visible" spending in the million-peso range. It is of little help that COMELEC does not seem to have any specific guidelines on reporting online campaign spending; the poll body has not at present provided any provisions regulating online campaigns. The fact that many such transactions can be done without the traceability of receipts makes the tracking of such spending something close to an exercise in futility. As such, it becomes a matter of personal choice whether or not a voter will support a candidate who is obviously throwing money into attention-grabbing activities; it becomes a challenge to the Filipino cyber-community to identify and reject candidates who have been throwing fistfuls of dollars at online campaigning. Whether such a challenge will be met by the electorate remains to be seen.

Image screencap created by author.