Another Anti-Union Tactic: Google AdWords
I was looking for reporting on a recent Town Hall meeting in Pittsburgh on the Employee Free Choice act and found a piece by the Pittsburg Post-Gazette online.
At the bottom of the page appeared two small ads generated by the Google AdWords program.
The headlines on the ads were Bills Deny Secret Ballot and Unions Explained.
Anyone reading the story was just one click away from anti-union propaganda. This is the first time I have seen Google AdWords used in this way. This is a new communication tactic that union editors and communications directors need to know about as they calculate on-line media strategies.
I think it raises issues about appropriate balance for newspapers that participate in the Google AdWords program.
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Great catch
I've seen those kinds of links and it never occurred to me that they were placed there purposefully to misinform the public. Wow!
The way the AFL-CIO could combat this by outbidding the competition so the AFL-CIO's links pro-union links would pop up more often than the anti-union links. That's the way Google ad words work. The more you pay on certain key words, the more likely your ad will appear. This would probably start a bidding war between unions and the anti-union forces that are out there.
Google ads
A community blog I help run here in Madison had a news story on a pro-labor rally. We were shocked to see that the google ads on our site after reading the text decided the best ads would be for anti-labor law firms. Google has a feature that can shut those ads off, so if you use google ads on your site, it might be good to watch out for.
Google is a fairly responsible company and I hope they are looking into tweaking this feature.
Yes, you can block
However, msm sources are not going to block those ads for you. And msm sites see the most traffic. AFL-CIO needs to start snatching up those keywords and bid up the cost on them.
unionfreeamerica.com
Someone at the IronWorkers site was talking about the site with the "Bills Deny Secret Ballot" link on it. It's got information about who the registrant of that domain is. See it here.
David Denholm
The site is registered to David Denholm. This guy also works for the Public Service Research Foundation. The mission of the foundation? "Studying the Impact of Unionism in Government on Government."
Here is a link to his bio: http://www.psrf.org/issues/dydbio.jsp.
According to Media Transparency.com they received $42,000 from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc. in 2003 (described as the country's largest and most influential right-wing foundation).
Just some FYI.
Good info
Yeah, I found out he was connected to psrf.org, too. In fact, the phone number listed goes to them. They patched me right through to him. Though when I talked to him, Denholm said that they were not providing any financial backing to the site (yeah, right). He said he made money by selling bumperstickers and a few pennies for anti-union pens he sells to workers trying to bust unions.
More details when I get time.
I called the owner of the site
I called the owner of the site using the information in the link to the Ironworkers' site above. I posed as an anti-union person who wanted to make a donation. I was able to pepper him with all sorts of questions and got some good information on his operation. I'll post details when I get more time later today, probably some time tonight.
This is giving me ideas
What if we started a collection to help advertise CoD through Google AdWords? I already use Google AdWords but to keep my costs down, I have to advertise on very specific words and names. That way I only spend about a buck a month. If we pooled our resources, we could help get the word about this site out there a lot better.
strategic thinking
instead of (or at the very least, along with) spending huge sums of money trying to beat these rich slimeballs at their own game, why not just flood the advertised anti-union site with hits, via the keyword ad? all you have to do is organize a campaign of getting as many people googling union-related keywords and clicking on the anti-union ads that appear. every click on such an ad costs its sponsor money, and every dollar they inadvertently spends for a union activist to visit their site is a dollar they don't have to spend on advertising to people who don't already know better.
it's cheap, it's easy, and it's fun! see how many times you can click on the ad for a union-bashing site in an hour! have competitions with your co-workers! see what other loaded key words have been bought up by right-wing assholes, and repeatedly click on their ads too! every little bit hurts (them)!
i'd welcome any feedback you may have on this idea. i'm working on an article about ways to use paid keyword advertising against offensive/unscrupulous advertisers, and would welcome input. you can reach me, predictably, at [chupatinta ~at~ gmail ~dot~ com].
in solidarity,
dave mitchell
Probably wouldn't work
Well, the problem is that the guy is probably only paying 5 cents per click on the keywords he's chosen. We'd have to do an awful lot of clicking to break his bank. Also, Google has a policy that if the advertiser suspects "click fraud" they'll get a refund. I'm guessing Google also has systems in place to detect when a user is repetively clicking in an ad.
That being said, your idea will probably work on higher priced keywords like "unions". An occasional click on an anti-union ad by each of us might do a little damage. But I don't think it would have a significant impact.