Growth Potential in Political Space, Says Talking Point's Rinaldo

After taking over Yahoo’s political ad sales during the ’08 campaign season, Diane Rinaldo has since moved on to run ad sales for Talking Points Memo. I met her briefly while at lunch with an old online political ad friend the other day, and got the chance to chat with her this afternoon about what she’s up to at TPM.

Rinaldo is based here in NYC, but she told me she gets down to D.C. quite often, as many of her clients and prospective clients are around the beltway area. Since she’s been selling to political advertisers, she said D.C. agencies are “very welcoming” and “very receptive.”

A visit to TPM now will tell you a lot of the site’s ads come through networks, but Rinaldo is working to change that. In addition to selling standard ad units, TPM – a liberal political blog stalwart — is offering sponsorships and custom ads. The ball is just getting rolling on that stuff – “I’ve been here barely two months,” she reminded me.

Overall, though, I heard from Rinaldo what I’ve heard from several other online political ad folks lately: political advertisers are finally starting to pay attention to digital media in recent months, spurred mainly by the success of the Obama campaign’s digital efforts.

“Definitely in the political space there’s tremendous growth potential,” she said. “With Obama’s success…a lot of people are — whether its nonprofits, organizations, unions, etc. — are doing probably more in digital than in the past years.”