The newly-formed Broadcasting Authority of Ireland recently issued a report written by veteran journalist and media lecturer Dr Kevin Rafter that reviewed the longtime restrictions that prevent political advertising from reaching the Irish TV and radio airwaves. On its website, the BAI headlined the report “Independent Report Confirms Majority Support for Retention of Prohibitions on Political Advertising in Ireland”, citing a Red C poll commissioned for the report.

In its press release the BAI chief executive was quoted as saying, “The outcomes of the Red C poll contained in the report appear to support a continuation of the existing prohibitions. It is important to emphasise that this is an independent report and the recommendations contained therein are the personal views of the the author and have not been considered by the Authority”.

But is it really the open and shut case the BAI press release suggests?

Kevin Rafter, writing in the Irish Times on the day of the report’s publication, seems to argue otherwise — or at least just state the obvious:

The blanket ban has been reaffirmed in several pieces of broadcasting legislation approved by the Oireachtas over many years, including the new Broadcasting Act passed into law last July. It was surprising that the Oireachtas did not engage more fully with the status quo, given technological advances and recent European Court determinations that may leave the current regime open to legal challenge on freedom of expression grounds.

The ban in countries like Ireland and in the United Kingdom was conceived in a different era. The discrimination between print advertising (permitted) and broadcast advertising (banned) was justified due to the particular power of the broadcast medium.

But the internet has assumed an important role in political communications and has provided new ways of communicating political messages. Many political parties, candidates and interest groups are now using the internet to distribute advertising that cannot be placed on television stations. Only last month, the Conservatives in the UK because the first political party at Westminster to run a marketing campaign on internet music service Spotify to target younger votes.

In an era of media convergence between the various strands of broadcasting – television, radio and the internet – it does seem timely to review the blanket ban on political advertising on television and radio. To do otherwise would be to be locked in a policy and technological time warp.

If the current regime is open to European legal challenge, and if the blanket broadcast advertising ban is “locked in a policy and technological time warp” as it is made farcical by the growing importance of unregulated online communications for political campaigns, clearly the BAI headline doesn’t make a lot of sense. It shouldn’t be a settled matter in Ireland. The recent Lisbon referendum campaigns showed how difficult it can be to reach a large percentage of low-information voters with important information about issues of major importance.

What do you think? Cast your vote about whether the ban should be lifted in our LinkedIn poll.

Richard Delevan is deputy managing director and head of digital at McConnellsintegrated.

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Here’s the one stat you need to know to understand why Obama schooled McCain:

30 million
versus
68 million.

30 million: number of voters contacted by the McCain campaign.
68 million: number of voters contacted by the Obama campaign.

All the interweb bells & whistles were just ways to make that level of voter contact possible.

Does voter contact matter? Any tallyman for the Soldiers worth his salt can tell you the answer to that. But if you’re unconvinced, ponder this — the Washington Post reported the weekend before the election that more than HALF of all Virginia voters (not voted Dem since 1964) had been contacted by the Obama campaign, roughly mirroring Obama’s performance in voter contact nationwide.

But here’s the REAL killer stat: among Virginia voters contacted in person, phone, email or text message by the Obama campaign - but NOT the McCain campaign - those voters favoured Obama by 75% to 22%.

Obama won Virgina with a margin of 232,000 votes - or roughly 7%.

So, Tubridy et al - and you’re welcome for giving your site some free exposure at Leviathan last week (and in a few presentations since) - you’d be better off focusing less on riffing on the Obama font (Gotham, in case you care) and more on the ground game. Then, even if you - like Tubridy - are the the whitest guy on the planet, you too can be about change. Yes we can, baby.

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Fortunately I left it aside until later. And in between a few other highly respected, unfortunate people who got fooled had managed to sign up for the “alpha” version, which led to their address books being sucked up and regurgitated in the kingdom of spamalot.

Sam has been apologising all afternoon via Twitter.

Bottom line: delete that email re SocialMinder.

This public service message was paid for by the Committee for Spammer Genocide.

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I’m still waiting to see the tightening, and Pollster’s average says maybe a little:

But the tastiest bit for those of the “we must crush them” mindset (or as Kos prefers, leave everything on the road), Pew has a new poll out today. Obama 53 - McCain 39.

Well, maybe. But I still can’t help but think, please God, we need this break. No zealot like a convert I guess.

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Lest anyone think they are holier than thou on this issue, here’s Fine Gael in 2005:

Extension of medical card to over 70s/nursing home charges
The absence of financial controls and accountability for money spent on the medical card scheme was sharply criticised by both the Comptroller and Auditor General and by external consultants for the Department of Health, who investigated the scheme.

The initial estimate was 39,000 people aged over 70, at a cost of ?19 million. However, this soon proved to be “significantly in error” as by December 2001 some 63,000 new over-70s had registered. The first full year of the scheme (2002) cost €126m.

The effect of the extension of the medical card to the Over 70s on long stay charges was also not considered by the Government. The 2001 Act which introduced the Over 70s medical card left no doubt that people holding the card could not be charged for long stay public care. This oversight, has cost the taxpayer approximately €400m since 2001.

So, in 2005, the government’s over-generosity/recklessness with too much spending was the problem, now it’s that the government was fixing its mistake?

Can someone point me to a rational explanation of the cost explosion beyond “long stay public care”? And can someone ask Enda if he still thinks - as this implies - that “long stay public care” should now be charged to medical card holders over 70?

In the meantime, can someone explain to me how long they think the Coyote of Irish public finances could keep running over the canyon without looking down and succumbing to gravity? Ye voted them in. THREE TIMES.

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But I now know the panel includes myself, Kate Fitzgerald of Democrats Abroad, Kings College academic Rory Miller and…drumroll…Senator Mike Gravel, currently of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

So, point of order, is Gravel allowed to bring Obama Girl?

UPDATE: event is 7pm in the Newman Building on UCD’s Belfield campus.

UPDATE2: stupid typo pointed out to me. date is in fact in October. More caffeine please.

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Indeed, statistics indicate that web traffic is becoming more concentrated at the largest sites, even as the overall number of sites continues to increase, and one recent study found that as people’s use of the web increases, they become “more likely to concentrate most of their online activities on a small set of core, anchoring Websites.”

Is this simply a function of the web’s crossover to mainstream? Or is the effect exaggerated, as late adopters flooding into the pool of web traffic tend to stay in the brightly-lit corners of the web? And if true, are we poised to see the great shakeout - when content sites that, ala the Long Tail theory, might have had economic viability no longer have a future? Food for thought.

UPDATE: Carr’s piece also includes a lengthy riff on the migration from Bloglines to Google Reader - the problems with the former being reasons being something Mulley recently nodded towards…eventually, even the fiercest critics of the Google can be seduced by the reliability….

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Enders, a research group, estimates that the UK online display advertising market was at best flat in the third quarter, compared with the same period last year. Growth rates in recent years have been double digit.

The rates that media owners can charge for display advertising have fallen by about a third over the last year, it said.

“The phenomenal growth of online advertising . . . was always going to slow down at some point,” says Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for Guardian Newspapers. “The next 18 months will be tougher because of the overall economic climate.”

In the US, the picture is more mixed:

after 17 quarters of ballooning growth, online revenue at newspaper sites is falling. In the second quarter, it was down 2.4 percent compared with last year, to $777 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America. It was the only year-over-year drop since the group began measuring online revenue in 2003.

Overall online advertising, however, is strong. Display advertising, the graphics-rich ads that newspaper sites carry, grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter, TNS Media Intelligence reported.

Then there was this piece in the Sunday Business Post purporting to show a trend:

In June 2007, Irish advertisers spent €2 million on display ads; in 2008, just €1.8 million was spent. In July 2007, they spent €1.8 million online; in 2008, that dropped to €1.4 million.

In August 2007, €1.9 million was spent online. But by August 2008, the figure had plunged 30 per cent to just €1.3million.This is despite the release of a survey last week by Results International Group that predicted online ad spend would rise by as much as 200 per cent in the coming year.

‘‘What we seem to be seeing is a return to 2006 levels of spend,’’ said Michael Dwyer, chief executive of Pigsback.com, one of the most established online businesses in Ireland.

‘‘It’s clear to us that online in Ireland isn’t immune to the budget cuts that are happening everywhere.”

While it stands to reason that online display ad spend will certainly be affected by the downturn, there are a couple of things to be suspicious of here. First, the Irish numbers are affected by the fact that the IAPI database only measures a limited number of sites. Second, there is the Google, which posted better-than-expected 3rd quarter results last week on the basis of its ad revenue.

So we’ll see.

But newspaper sites are certainly not going to be the cash cows some had hoped.

Pity the newspapers here that failed to push the broadband agenda more seriously. If they’d gotten behind The Mulley in a meaningful way six years ago, they may have had a better time on the upside. Now they have to come up with online revenue models in a downturn. Then again, maybe those models are more robust than ones predicated on 20% growth forever.

Aileen O’Toole has been seeing this for months. It’s partly why she’s been advising media websites to diversify out of online display. I just don’t know that the affiliate relationships are really going the saviour.

UPDATE: A commenter from Results International Group below points out that the SBP misquoted the results of their survey - and I’ve corrected one other thing: I’d meant to put a question mark at the end of the headline, because I don’t think it’s entirely clear where the market is headed in Ireland. Will brand owners revert to conservatism and seek out better discounts in traditional media as prices fall for TV and outdoor? Or will online prove its flexibility and offer better discounts, with downward price pressure exerted by blind networks?

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Next up to endorse: United Mothers’ Association, Apple Pie Federation, Flag Unlimited.

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But nothing from McCain to push it in that direction tonight (a fact that is turning the dead-ender right in knots). Why?

Did McCain wake up on Tuesday and have a moment of clarity through the senile dementia, remembering the man he used to [seem to] be? Did they figure out that Ayers attacks are not polling well - that the Keating counterpunch is too lethal?

Or have they just given up?

Story of the night.

Second story: Is Sarah Palin just totally freelancing now?

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