I recall seeing Obama campaign ads on Kos.
Lambert of Corrente questions my memory -- or at least, he seeks harder proof. Fair enough. Unfortunately, I didn't think to grab any screen caps.
Still, research was able to establish that Obama spent $16 million in online ads in 2008, most of which was aimed at compiling lists of O-fans. Anyone with such a goal could have made no better decision than to advertise on Daily Kos. Kos made a million bucks from ad revenues in 2008, or so run various online estimates. (For some reason, Markos Moulitsas does not cc copies of his tax forms to me.)
Thus, it seems to be a very good bet that money from the Obama ad budget went to Kos. That's why I feel fairly safe in trusting my memory.
So what, you ask? Well -- consider this story on the "blogola" phenomenon. The FTC wants to make life tougher on companies that pay bloggers for positive reviews of products.
This summer, the government agency is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they're writing about a sponsor's product and voicing opinions that aren't their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they're being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product.
In some cases, bloggers disclosed the incentives up front. But there's wiggle room: The coming FTC guidelines don't define what's meant by a "payment" and don't specify what incentives—other than cash—must be disclosed to readers by blog authors. "That's a real challenge, determining what compensation means," Corcoran says.The above quotes refer to physical products -- MP3 players and laptops and such. But obviously, if a political blog makes money from a candidate's ad budget, then that blog encounters a conflict of interest when it runs pieces praising that candidate.
Will the new FTC guidelines apply to sites like Kos?
8 comments:
I could swear kos said Cheetoville grossed $2 million last year in revenues.
(Katiebird had a link)
What revenues do they have besides advertising?
myiq: I stand corrected. And my point still stands.
Do you think that MM earned all that money by running ads for "The God Who Wasn't There"? I don't think that that silly doc had that sort of ad budget. (The thing looks like it was made for about 500 bucks.)
Kos said "easily cleared $1 million."
In comments here *I* joked and said it would have been $2 million if he hadn't paid me $1 million for iamkissingobamasbutt.com. :)
Sergei Rostov
We're going to have to find a way to permanently archive that link about where kos said he "easily cleared 1 million"
It's from the "I'm Back" post on 1/12/08
"2008 was a good election year for us electorally, of course, but it was also a good year for this site. We easily broke $1 million in revenues, which have allowed us to do a bunch of cool new things:"
http://www.archive.org/index.php
"The Wayback Machine"
Shows ads too. I presume they are the ones from the date selected. 2008 is only archived to around midyear.
For anyone who wants to spend time on that.
And surely there must be other ways to gain benefit other than taxable ad income.
Think about it.
http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/
I don't remember a lot of ads on Kos. Now, there were Obama ads EVERYWHERE, so maybe I'm not remembering them on Kos not because they weren't there, but because there weren't any more at Kos than anywhere else.
As far as the $2 million -- presumably Kos has a rate package. It would be interesting to sample the 2008 Google cache, and throw those numbers time the rate package at the $2 million....
Couple of comments on Kos before the purge:
1. What I remember most was that the OFB were more or less interchangeable (not all, but a huge portion). They all used the same talking points, and they all used the same tactics. It was like they had been trained. (From the SacBee, we got a glimpse of what training on the ground was like -- the conversion narratives, which was generally the first move by these guys.) The talking points came in waves, as if they were emanating from a central source. Sometimes, it even seemed like there were shift changes... When I remembered that Axelrod's day job was corporate AstroTurfing, I always pictured a huge warehouse in, say, Obama, NB, with OFB working three shifts, typing away.... And clearly it would be very useful to the Obama campaign to capture Kos; it would be capturing a cable operation, in readership terms. That said, there is no hard evidence I have seen; every so often there's a random mention of 450 bloggers, but I've never seen a link.
2. Somewhat harder evidence is the Orwellian screen shots that LJ got (and posted on under the heading Fuck You, Kos; I got one, too, I think for propagating the Unity Pony meme, but I was so innocent I took it for a routine sysadmin thing, and didn't take a screen shot). The essence of it was "I agree to stop sucking" with an OK button. This is significant because the sysadmins and the techs had to be involved; in other words, management; in other words, Kos. Kos, therefore, wasn't only posting against Obama's (now) Secretary of State; he was actively working to purge them from the site.
3. Would Kos have invoiced Axelrod for this? Probably not. Would Kos have checked the sources of, say, large donations to keep the site running? )r many small ones? Probably not. How about consulting contracts? How about contracts to set up other Scoop sites? I can think of a lot of ways for money to be laundered, especially since -- am I right? -- DK is closely held and isn't bound by any of the requirements that bind parties or 527s. So I guess step 1 would to be see if those advertising numbers add up.
Just an fyi, here is dkos' advertising policy.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/14/121448/33
Post a Comment