Senator Barack Obama's campaign ran a more sophisticated online operation during the first six months of 2008 and Obama leads Senator McCain in site visitors, candidate searches, and display ads, while the McCain campaign leads in video views, according to a study from comScore Ad Metrix.
In the first half of 2008, the Obama campaign regularly displayed more online ads than the McCain campaign, averaging close to 92 million ads per month compared to about 7 million per month for McCain. In recent months, Obama's online efforts have increased significantly with 150 million ads in May and 244 million in June.
"Not only have the two campaigns placed a different level of emphasis on the importance of using online advertising as part of the media mix, but their execution also shows stark differences," said Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst at comScore.
"While Obama's ads tend to be 'brand-building' ads encouraging people to join the movement, McCain's ads are often issue-oriented. Additionally, while Obama ads have an almost universally positive message, McCain ads feature a mix of positive and negative messages."
While BarackObama.com has captured close to four times the average number of monthly visitors (2.2 million) as JohnMcCain.com (583,000), the McCain site has achieved more than three times as many video views (2.1 million vs. 612,000).
"By featuring video content prominently on the front page of JohnMcCain.com, the campaign has been able to effectively leverage the Web to reach a larger audience with its video campaign messages," said Lipsman.
The number of searches with the term "Obama" was about four times that of "McCain" (5.4 million vs. 1.3 million). comScore says this is likely due to the public's interest in Barack Obama's historic candidacy as the first African - American presidential nominee from a major party and wanting to learn more about the background and positions of the candidate.
In an interview Wednesday with Fox News, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the Internet presents an opportunity for politicians to get their message out and that in the future all candidates will have to run very advanced Internet campaigns.
About the author:
Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews.
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Obama/MCCain.
I'm now watching the Rep Convention now, and I'm bored to death. It's Obama hands down. I was impressed and even sadden to see all the Videos on McCain during his capture in the 60"s, he indeed was a war hero however, that is not going to make him a leader/ Comandor In Chief of the United States. MCain is just makeing promises after promises, he doesn't tell us how he's going to make all these changes. He is slaming Sentor Obama (not a good stragey) Two weeks ago my husand and I were on the coast Morro Bay Calif Hwy 101 along the Pacific Ocean, There was a group of people on the pier, with signs saying Swim for Obama. And they actually swam from one end of the pier to the other very end in shark festa waters can you imagine!. Well it was awesome to see. Way out here in California people every where of all races rooting for the next President of the United States. By the way my left ear is bending as I type this, John MCain is talking about his inprisonment again, don't get me wrong it was a terrible to say the least however, enough isd enough don't you agree? I don't here any substance. Last but not least his running mate Palin should keep running, she does not have what it takes to be second or first Oh I'm 74 years old :)
God Bless amd God bless America with Sentor Obama
Sincerely.
Comacuhla1@sbcglobal.net
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