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Obama vs. McCain and Online Video Ads
August 28, 2008

The battleground for the US Presidency has expanded to the internet over the last few years, and now the candidates are starting to really show off their web savvy-ness. Surprisingly, however, it’s not the youthful Barack Obama campaign that is using the web to its advantage – according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s the John McCain campaign that has figured out a way for people to see their online video ads.

While Obama has made leaps in raising money for his campaign – through his own website and social networking sites like Facebook – McCain apparently found his own strategy to capitalize on people using the internet as a tool to educate themselves about the candidates. In the most recent example, by outbidding the Obama campaign, McCain’s marketers were able to buy the Google keywords for Joe Biden. So? Well, try a search for ‘Joe Biden’, and see what pops up first – it’s not information that is favorable to this Vice Presidential nominee, but a McCain video ad that shows Biden criticizing Obama during the primaries.

By buying up the keywords people are searching for – names of politicians, key issues that matter to them, etc., McCain is putting himself at the forefront, getting his message out first to anyone who is searching for information. But will anyone listen? We’ll find out in November.

To read the article in the Wall Street Journal, visit: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988099541678063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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