On a panel at a Google online advertising confab in DC recently, we were asked what we would most like to see in 2011. My answer was simple: bigger budgets.

This drew laughs from the audience many of whom share our physical pain from watching political organizations pay lip service to the importance of an online audience, and then, devote 98% of their media budget to television and radio.

While it summarizes what I’d like to see for online advertising, “bigger budgets” is no more the answer for political advertising than it is to education reform. And without context, the cries for “bigger budgets” by digital media agencies, like ours, risk sounding just like the same cries by telemarketing, direct mail, and TV consultants — profit motivated. They’re not.

Our often maniacal obsession with “bigger budgets” for online advertising derives from a passion for a more accountable, common-sense and, ultimately, effective approach to advertising, regardless of format. It’s not about bigger, but smarter, and running your current advertising strategy through a fiscally responsible lens. In light of the recent Forrester Research study showing that Internet usage has caught up to TV viewing, even among the 65+ demographic, I outline the conservative case for putting more weight — and, yes, more dollars — behind online advertising. It’s the right, conservative way to go.

Results-Driven
A results-driven effort focuses on meeting objectives, delivering to the required time, cost and quality, and holds performance to be critically important. With digital advertising, you may take your objective — reaching women, in Florida, between the ages of 30-54, who have children — and target narrowly to reach your audience. Factor in re-targeting, with the ability to target those who have already indicated an interest, and you may continually refine your target audience. More accurate targeting means more relevant content for your audience, and a better experience.

With DirectTV and spot cable advertising, television advertising shows promise of offering more refined targeting. However, most political campaigns devote the largest percentage of their budget to broadcast buys. Broadcast television advertising is purchased by media market, which may be often suitable for brands intent on reaching population centers, regardless of borders. But for political organizations that must reach audiences in geography-based jurisdictions, media market targeting falls short.

For example, if you watched TV in Washington, DC in October 2010 you would have seen ads for candidates running for office in Maryland and Virginia, for whom you couldn’t vote. As video programming turns digital, and convergence is fully realized, all multimedia advertising will become finely targeted. Meanwhile, digital advertising offers a more results-driven method of advertising than TV.

Cost-Effective
As fiscal conservatives, we expect every dollar to be spent wisely. Media market targeting, as outlined above, resulted in millions of dollars of waste in the 2010 elections. Campaigns for statewide office in Delaware, for example, hinged their success on TV advertising into the Philadelphia media market, the only market that reaches Delaware’s Newcastle County population center. Yet, more than $.95 per $1.00 spent advertising in this media market reaches voters who can’t vote in Delaware. That’s 95% of a budget — money the campaign has slogged away to raise — returning $0 on investment.

Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell ending her campaign with $1 million in the bank appears less irresponsible when you consider that had she spent it on advertising to the Philadelphia media market, $950,000 would likely have paid to reach Pennsylvania voters.

Common-Sense
Why do we advertise? To reach people. Where do we advertise? Where people are. It would follow then, that we would adjust our advertising to the places where people spend their time, proportionally. As we discuss, here and here, recommending 10% of media spend is nowhere near sufficient.

What is sufficient depends on the demographics you are trying to reach, and the price of advertising to reach them. If you are targeting an under 30 population, who according to Forrester Research watch the least TV, then you may spend 100% of your advertising budget online. If you include TV advertising in your strategy, and you buy in the bigger media markets, then TV will occupy a greater percentage. In any case, media budgets that devote more than 90% of the budget to TV advertising almost never make sense. As the new Forrester study shows, even the oldest citizens, traditionally the most reliable voters, spend as much time online as watching the tube.

Accountable
Digital advertising offers robust reporting metrics to measure reach and engagement in real time. If you don’t have access to these, you should, so pick a different ad network. Analytics help you eliminate waste and invest fully in what works. The challenge with metrics, however, is that no comparable metrics exist for other forms of advertising. Fortunately, political polling firms have started to survey on the impact of digital versus other forms of voter contact, showing digital ads lead to message recognition by voters.

Plan for the Future
Finally, planning for the future, is smart, responsible behavior. The low barrier to digital advertising — $5 minimum to start running on Google AdWords — and real-time performance data — Message A vs. Message B — takes the guesswork out of what will work and where. You can run a small test, see the results, and invest more fully in what works in the future.

To date, campaigns have viewed online ad spending as an extra or an afterthought, making it difficult to test what works and invest in breakthrough creative. As a result, achieving what’s possible with targeting and creative ad formats suffers. Once campaigns adjust their budgets to media consumption habits, digital advertising will become a line item from the beginning, and the campaigns will be more effective overall.

Conclusion
While more campaigns spent money on online ads in 2010 than in 2008, the percentage spent online came nowhere close to addressing the reality of American media consumption. The conservative case for online advertising doesn’t advocate investing in digital media only, but instead, a media mix that focuses on meeting your objective in a fiscally responsible way.

It’s no mystery that those who make millions of dollars from a percentage of TV media buys appreciate inefficiency, but as conservatives, we value a more common sense approach that gets results.