Immediately following President Obama’s address to Congress this week, the Republican National Committee sent out an email blast to all its supporters (right), inviting them to donate and to watch Governor Bobby Jindal’s Republican response to the speech.  The link opens up a browser window pointed at the Jindal video on Blip.tv, a free, advertising-based service that provides video hosting and distribution to independent producers of video (and promises to send video creators a 50% share of the advertising revenue it generates from the videos it posts).

That sounds just great, but here’s the catch: the RNC has no control of the ads or “related videos” posted alongside its video segments.  And the adjacencies can be, shall we say, unpredictable.  Click, for example, on the thumbnail image to the left to view what viewers would see today when they click on the “WATCH” button in the RNC email, and you’ll what I mean.  Take a look, in particular, at the “Featured Episodes” list on the right-hand side of the video page.  There, right alongside the spokesman for the Republican Party, on a page headlined “Republican National Committee”, is an encouragement to watch the following:

• “Who’s Coming to Dinner” — “In this week’s episode of Cherry Bomb, the ladies cover a topic every lesbian will face sooner or later: When is it time to take your girlfriend home to meet the parents?”
• “Enter The Fold” — “A time-traveling geek with Asperger’s Syndrome, an investigation by a Gaming Babes Magazine reporter, a sex-cult guru.”
• “Post-Baby Body” — “Rounder tummies, stretch marks, and big changes, um, “down there.” A woman’s body gets knocked around during pregnancy…”

Not exactly red-meat Republican stuff.

Elsewhere on the page are clickable ads urging viewers to donate to various causes unrelated to the GOP.  And I swear I saw an ad for something else splashed across the Governor’s image when I first saw it on Wednesday, though the ad is no longer present.

The non-sequiturs of “related” videos and competitive ads aside, the RNC’s use of Blip.tv rather than their own private channel represents a terrible waste of an opportunity.  Today’s internet TV technology — through platforms like Brightcove and PermissionTV — could have served up Gov. Jindal’s response in a custom-designed player for about a penny per view.  More importantly, it would serve up Gov. Jindal’s address in a custom video player specially designed to call the viewer to action — through integrated polling, animated calls to action, email address-collection tools, viral tools, and other devices that would use the video as a launching point for an interactive experience designed to motivate the audience to the RNC’s purpose, not to get them to watch an unrelated video when they’re finished.

So to summarize, the RNC traded away an opportunity to capitalize on its viewership by going the “free video” route.  And even worse, the choice they presented in the email blast was an either/or choice (“DONATE” or “WATCH”), and the video did not tie viewers back to the DONATE action as a follow-on.

Does this mean that the RNC should not have published the Gov. Jindal video out on free, ad-supported services?  Absolutely not; they should publish the video wherever they can, for services like Blip.tv and YouTube offer reach to audiences beyond the RNC list and try to get them back to the private channel for further engagement.  But to use an ad-based service to try to engage an already-identified audience is simply a mistake, because the value in additional follow-on action in a controlled environment far exceeds the penny or so it costs to serve up the video.

One of the many things that the Obama presidential campaign did right with technology was to use both reach channels (like YouTube) and engagement channels (i.e. BarackTV on Brightcove) in close coordination.  The Mitt Romney 2008 campaign was also out in front on this with Mitt TV, and was ready to roll out some unprecedented video engagement tools for a general election campaign.

Internet video is a new and exciting tool for political campaigns.  And during a time when services like Blip.tv and even YouTube are struggling to find their business models and offering lots of free goodies, it’s tempting to take advantage of their apparent largesse and use the free tools while you can.  But the opportunity cost of this can be great, as internet video has huge potential as an engagement medium.  And that will be the big tech story of the 2012 campaign.

To read and hear more about our experience in using video channels in political campaigns, see also:

• “In Political Campaigns, YouTube is a Two-Edged Sword”
• “Ten Lessons from Mitt TV”
• Podcast Interview: “Presidential Candidates See Web Video Differently”
• Interview: “Mitt TV”