WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush and Democratic front-runner John Kerry are engaged in a high-tech political showdown that combines the targeting power of direct mail with the glossy appearance of a television commercial.
The format is a Web video message e-mailed to millions of the Democratic and Republican rank-and-file.
”It’s animated direct mail,” said Michael Cornfield, research director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. ”It’s meant to mobilize supporters, raise money and create buzz.”
Thanks to advances in technology, campaigns are making widespread use of Web videos that are quicker to produce and cheaper to distribute than direct-mail literature sent to voters’ homes or television commercials.
And unlike those TV ads, the videos that appear on the Internet face none of the content regulations of the 2002 campaign finance law, including the statement by the candidate of ”I approved this ad.”