Google Adwords for Political Campaigns

Paid placement is the quickest way to put your local campaign website in the top positions of most major search engine searches — but only for the terms (keywords) that you are willing to “bid” for. The way PPC works is that you pay each time someone searches and then clicks through to your website using a search term that you bid on. For example, if you buy the keyword phrase “TinyTown Mayor,” your ad would display on the results page when somebody searches for “TinyTown Mayor.” If managed properly, pay per click can deliver very cost effective and targeted traffic.

By far, the largest PPC program is Google Ads (Formerly Google Adwords).

Google controls more than half of the web searches on any given day. The Google Ads program displays paid listings that appear above and to the right-hand side of its regular search results. Besides the Google search engine, advertisers also appear on affiliate sites.

Google Ads is simple to set up and the most flexible of the major pay per click services. It has no monthly minimums, and your click-through costs are billed monthly to a credit card.

Running political ads? Your reach may be limited.

In recent years, Google has placed significant restrictions on how politicians and political campaigns can reach users. With restricted targeting for election ads, you can only use following criteria for targeting election ads:

Geographic location (except radius around a location)
Age, gender
Contextual targeting options such as: ad placements, topics, keywords against sites, apps, pages and videos

Political content includes ads for political organizations, political parties, political issue advocacy or fundraising, and individual candidates and politicians.

Verification is required for all political or issue-based ads

Any individual or organization that purchases election advertising on Google or YouTube must provide information to Google confirming that they are a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Google also requires all political ads to display a ‘paid for’ disclosure. This verification process can take time, so you’ll want to start the process as early as possible.

Google Ad tips for your political campaign

Limit your targeting as much as you can to the specific areas you want to reach.
In the Edit Campaign Settings, keep the “show ads on Google and the content network” option unchecked. This will keep your ads only on the search engines.
Use every term or phrase three times. Once as is, once surrounded by quotations – “John Jones” – and once surrounded by brackets – [John Jones]. Using quotations and brackets will give you the highest click through rates (CTR) and in turn, Google will give you higher placement for those terms.
Use negative terms to keep away unwanted traffic. If you are running for Mayor of Tiny town, you might not want to pay for searches for “Tinytown school elections” if you are not running for school board. Consider putting the word “school” as a negative term in your ad group.
For accurate ad comparisons between multiple ads, go to the Edit Campaign Settings and turn off “Automatically optimize ad serving for my ads”.
The popularity of your ad will give you an advantage in ranking. Your ad can even rise above someone paying more for a specific keyword. Conversely, if your ad isn’t very successful, it may drop in the rankings, even though your cost per click remains the same.
When you begin, set your maximum bid to minimum required, and set your daily budget to whatever Google recommends (assuming you can afford it, of course.). Note that if you set the daily budget limit lower than Google recommends, your ads may not be displayed on all searches.
When you set a bid amount, Google will show you the expected average position of your ads. Your ad ranking (position) will vary depending on the click-through rate, but you will want to bid high enough to keep your ads within the top positions.

Finally, be sure to use negative keywords to keep your ad from showing for irrelevant searches.

Although there are restrictions, consider using Google Ads as a component to your political advertising mix.