I had never heard the term before the WaPo’s Jose Antonio Vargas credited it with swinging the Virginia Democratic primary for governor in favor of Creigh Deeds:
Starting at 3 p.m EST Monday, hours before polls opened across Virginia, Deeds’s campaign bought what’s called a “Google blast.” Or, more appropriately, a Google attack. If you live in Northern Virginia (or, like many voters, work in D.C. but live in NoVa), Deeds has been almost inescapable on highly-trafficked sites such as washingtonpost.com, the blog Talking Points Memo and Oxygen.com, which is popular among women. Capitalizing on his Post endorsement, he peppered those sites with banner ads reading “The Washington Post endorsed one Democrat — Creigh Deeds” until polls closed.
Via Derek Thompson, who notes that just a month ago Deeds was running a distant third in the VA primary:
As Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire points out, the same strategy was used by Democrat Scott Murphy in his upset victory in the New York Congressional seat vacated by Hillary Clinton’s replacement, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. In that election surprise, Murphy covered
Google content network pages in the New York’s 20th district with promotions, something operatives called a “Google Network Blast” or “Google Surge.” Although most polls in the month leading up to his win had him behind, Murphy won the election by less than 1000 votes.
To find out more about the strategy, I’ve set up a Google Alert for both terms.