TV3 promoting a National/NZF government?

Written By: - Date published: 2:23 pm, August 1st, 2008 - 12 comments
Categories: election 2008, Media, news - Tags: , , ,

It seems TV3 has decided to promote a marriage between John Key and Winston Peters this week.
 
They appear to be paying for ads on Google that come up when you search for “John Key” or for “Winston Peters“, but not for other leaders like Helen Clark or Jeanette Fitzsimons. What’s more, when you click on TV3’s “Decision08” ad links, you are helpfully redirected to Key’s and Peter’s party pages (you can try it with the links above).
 
I’ve searched “John Key” twenty times and TV3’s ad comes up every time. I’ve searched “Helen Clark” the same number of times and TV3’s ad hasn’t come up yet.
 
TVNZ is running similar ads, but they’re promoting their site rather than particular candidates or parties – when you click on TVNZ’s ads, you get the home page for their site rather than the candidate or party relating to your search terms.
 
I can understand a media organisation seeking to promote their election website, but what TV3 is actually doing is promoting selected candidates and parties. That is simply wrong.

12 comments on “TV3 promoting a National/NZF government? ”

  1. Higherstandard 1

    Jasper

    This is the kind of thing I’d expect from Travellereve – I think you’re seeing conspiracies where there are none.

  2. randal 2

    no no hs…tv3 is currently beinbg run by infantilised manques of the guyon espiner class (i.e. give national a go). they talk about journalistic integrity and balance and right of reply but basically they are just kids with toys that are too big for them and an inflated sense of their own importance. they also have an ability to do mischief at will but I am sure that will be corrected after this election. about time the nation engaged in some discussion of principles instead of sports results.

  3. randal 3

    no no no hs.tv3is currently being run by infantilised manques of the guyon espiner class. they talk about journalistic integrity and balance and right of reply but basically they are just kids with toys that are too big for them and an inflated sense of their own importance. they also have the ability to do mischief at will but that will be corrected after the election. It is high time the nation enggaged in some discussion of principles instead of sports results and if radio new zealand had any clues that is what the manque krump should be doing at nights instead of running station breaks for himself ad nauseum.

  4. djp 4

    I imagine it would be because john key and Winston are popular searches right now and tv3 wants to capitalize on that to drive some traffic to their website.

  5. all_your_base 5

    Except that they’re driving it to the party pages rather than their front page like TVNZ does djp. Surely they should treat all leaders the same?

  6. No it’s not. It’s adwords. Please learn how it works.

  7. Felix 7

    djp that sounds very sensible… perhaps a little too sensible…

    edit: you say they’re sending the traffic to Key and Winnie? I take it back.

  8. Scribe 8

    infused points to the real reason and I second his suggestion.

  9. NX 9

    I’m not even sure what this post is about.

    Can someone dumb is down for me….

  10. Scribe 10

    NX,

    I’m not even sure what this post is about.

    Can someone dumb is down for me .

    It’s like most of the others on this site: “National = bad”, but with an extra pinch of “the media love National”.

    It’s ignorant at best, though. I’m sure lprent could explain to Jasper why this is happening.

    [lprent: Yep I could. I had to wade through ridiculous amounts of advertising theory when I was writing an advertising simulation. However Jasper’s theory is probably as valid as any other. Virtually none of the advertising theory on the net advertising made much sense to me. Most of it appeared to be written to justify a consultation fee for explaining it. ]

  11. Tane 11

    TV3 appear to have cancelled the service in the few hours since this post went up.

  12. MikeE 12

    Lol,

    This is retarded.

    This is just standard advertising practise, bid more on topics which are relavent to your product, which people are currently searching for.

    John Key and NZFirst are both in the news a lot this week, TV3 want to drive more traffic to their site, so their SEO will be bidding more for those particular adwords, combined with perhaps less other people bidding ont he same words.

    As mentioned above, seeing conspiracies where there are none.