Nonprofit pounces on SCHIP veto with Blogads campaign

It was no surprise that President Bush planned to veto the $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program today, but as soon as he did, the healthcare advocacy group, FamiliesUSA launched a well planned and well coordinated online response.

The group plans has been preparing to run an estimated 8 million impressions in the first week of the campaign on 14 blogs including Crooks and Liars, Democratic Underground, Firedoglake, Political Wire and Talking Points Memo.

Kate Kaye at The ClickZ Network published an excellent article today on the campaign:

Two ads mimicking streaming video units each display still photos of a child. The first ad to run features accompanying text that pushes viewers to visit the Families USA site, watch the :30 video ad, sign a petition and contact their congressional representatives about the veto. The petition encourages Congress to override the veto or send the bill back to President Bush.

In addition to building a database of supporters, the landing page (which is hosted on Convio) includes a fundraising call to action by asking supporters to help them run the online video on television. The campaign also received a virtual wave of media attention and even a blog post from Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Kaye's article also describes how another grassroots group called Results is running paid search ads targeted to the keyword "SCHIP" on Google. I've also heard that the conservative Heritage Foundation is also running paid search ads on the SCHIP search words.. but I haven't been able to locate it.. then again, ever since I asked Google to block evil liars from my search results, I haven't been able to find much on the Heritage Foundation.