BARISAN Nasional has ramped up its online advertising on platforms like YouTube, highlighting electoral promises by the ruling coalition should it retain power.

These clips are appearing before the start of popular music videos, blogs, movie trailers and even blogs.

For Chinese-language videos, ads from BN component party MCA are also getting their airtime, featuring attacks against DAP for its alliance with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

However, by far, most of BN ads are from caretaker prime minister Najib Razak’s YouTube channel, which has more than 100 videos uploaded since nomination day last Saturday. His channel has more than 31,000 subscribers.

The clips averaged about two minutes and each focused on a specific electoral issue.

For instance, one feature increases in BR1M assistance. Other ads target rural dwellers, youth, public university students, women and the working class.

One ad pushes the narrative that Malaysia’s economy is doing well because Malaysians can afford to go on overseas holidays, a line that several ministers have used before.

Najib’s ads also feature BN’s commitment to defend the rights of Muslims and Bumiputera, Sabahans and Felda settlers.

One video attacked Dr Mahathir, with the ad showing Najib calling the Pakatan Harapan chairman an “actor” over alleged U-turns and for supporting the opposition coalition that includes his former nemesis Anwar Ibrahim.

Views for these election ads, however, fluctuate from mostly the low hundreds to more than 1,000.

“Success of any ad depends on the conversion rate,” said David Ong-Yeoh of WestCoast Public Relations.

“Does the ad lead to a sale, or a change of opinion, or a purchase? We can’t tell from these ads whether it has resulted in any change of opinion.”

The BN ads on YouTube were longer than those normally aired on television channels, with lower production values, such as less expensive lighting, scenery and props, than their television counterparts.

Ong-Yeoh said YouTube ads are now the norm: “If YouTube is the chosen medium, and the target audience is present, then it is the right place to be. But as I said, it’s too early to tell whether they are successful.”

He added that audience profiling for such ads is not needed this time: “They are just saturating the slots.”

A check with Malaysia’s Google Adwords revealed that it costs the advertiser 10 sen to 15 sen per click. AdWords does not charge for displaying ads and advertisers only pay when a viewer sees the ad, views the video on YouTube or calls the business.

“The budget is not limited. It depends on how much you want to put as a deposit for every day,” said an AdWords specialist who declined to be named.

“So if you put a RM100, you’re set for about 667 views, that is along as the ad runs or as they view it.” – May 3, 2018.