WebProNews

Shows Audacity of Presumptive Nominee

Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama must be pretty confident he'll get his party's nomination; his campaign recently posted an Internet advertising job opening. Job duration: Indefinite.

Which means, we presume, maybe until June, maybe until November. We're guessing he means the latter.

In a posting dated May 9th on ClickZ's network, the Obama for America campaign lists the marketing position as full time and based in Chicago, Obama's hometown. He's equal opportunity for the most part since only Obama supporters need apply, and applicants should have expertise in search engine marketing, SEO, display advertising, Flash animation, and Web video experience.

Obama's campaign has been Internet savvy from the get-go, taking advantage of popular social networks, YouTube and other video sites. Earlier in the campaign, Obama was the only candidate among the three remaining who spoke at the Googleplex to outline a detailed 21st Century technology plan.

All three candidates already have paid search campaigns running, so the open position could mean Obama is set to go full force into leveraging the Web to get his message out.

Following sponsored links for all three candidates leads to landing pages, two of which—Clinton's and McCain's—make immediate calls for donations. In fact, it's hard to get away from Clinton's extended hand; navigating away from her first donation prompt leads to another donation-pushing landing page. Navigating away from that page leads finally to the official website where visitors again are ubiquitously prompted to give whatever's in their pockets.

Obama's landing page asks only for participation and donations are prompted via one link on the homepage, reinforcing what most know already: Hillary's broke—unless she dips into that $100 million again.

Maybe a search expert could help any of the candidates optimize for images of them appearing on Google Image search. While Barack is seen mostly looking Presidential, the West Side doo rag and platinum grill parody is still high in the rankings. For Hillary, it could help her shed the I-think-she-might-be-a-sociopath whispers. But McCain will always be a pirate—yarr.