Posts Tagged ‘mccain’

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McCain Wins in Search Ads

October 6, 2008

A presidential campaign is one of the most complex marketing and advertising engines around. They touch every channel of media, every vertical measured in detail, and invest in every part of the country. So decisions to spend in certain niches are very deliberate. The McCain Campaign has clearly made search engine advertising a priority.

Attack ads on both sides fill TV, radio and Youtube, as McCain’s superior use of PPC (pay per click) search advertising flies under the radar. PPC can make or break a lot of online businesses and the McCain camp has been out in front on search ads since early in the primaries.

John McCain is outspending (by 2x) Democrats Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton on issues as well as buying his opponents’ “brand terms” - iReport, April 2008

Both candidates have focused less on issue focused keywords (health care, economy, etc.) and focused more on keywords that deal with the opposing candidate. Within this trend, McCain ads are getting more clicks. On Google Adwords, McCain focused ads get around 250 clicks per day compared to around 150 per day for Obama.

One McCain ad displays when searching for “Obama for president?” It asks the searcher “Why not learn more about John McCain for president?” and links to the McCain website

According to data from the Google AdWords website, advertisements targeted to users searching for “John McCain” on the Internet, cost nearly twice as much as those targeting users searching for “Barack Obama.” - Politico

This presidential race is in new territory when it comes to utilizing the web. I imagine who has used it better will not be a clear picture until after the election is long over. Right now, both campaigns can claim their own wins.

Read more:
McCain winning Adwords fight, Tech Republican
McCain vs. Obama in paid/organic search, Search Engine Land
Increased issues keyword buying, Adweek

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VoteForTheMilf.com Not Owned by McCain

October 1, 2008

Over the last few days, news that VoteForTheMilf.com pointed to the McCain campaign website (and a video greeting from Sarah Palin) has traversed the social web pretty quickly. After first being discovered by GovGap.com many top Twitter and Digg users began to heavily promote it, right or wrong. Some social networks limit the voting up of clearly partisan political content, like on Youtube, but on Twitter and Digg there are no such limits. And stories based loosely in fact, unfortuneatly can sometimes quickly gain buzz.

I think the reasoned observer would have figured out pretty quickly that this was a prank on the McCain Campaign. Whether you find it funny or not, I would wager that most of the folks perpetuating the story that the McCain Campaign owned the domain were probably Obama supporters. Just a guess.

The truth that it was a prank has come out of course. It was accomplished because of some technical loop holes allowing for someone to easily remap the domain (not just redirect) to the McCain website IP address (boring tech info, I know). I imagine legal action would have eventually forced the prankster to fess up if he was not smart enough to come clean on his own.

What’s the lesson here? Beyond ensuring high profile websites have more security, this is a lesson on the openness of the web. Through no fault of your own, your brand can come under attach online pretty easily, and there are not always safeguards. The McCain campaign handled the issue pretty well. They simply told the facts as they knew them and discussed the issue no further.

Nice WSJ article on it here

This campaign is creating all kinds of internet firsts. I expect many more to come.

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McCain Blogette, Web Brand Mascot

August 21, 2008

There is one presidential campaign blog that is more youthful, fun, and entertaining than them all, and it cannot be found on the official McCain or the official Obama campaign websites. It is of course the 22 year old daughter of John McCain, Meghan. Since the middle of 2007, she has been on the campaign trail with her father, documenting everything from her music choice, to the daily diet of the press corps, how much she admires her father and his politics.

While no one can deny the Obama campaign has gotten more attention as the “youth candidate,” the McCain Blogette has defined, in its own way, a new niche in presidential campaign online marketing. The blog is technically unofficial. Meghan and a few of her friends go everywhere he father goes. They snap photos, do interveiws, share videos, and comment on the campaign. But they are anything but strictly political. They choose to mix in the things they care about and undoubtedly what other youth are interested in reading about, such as fashion, pop culture, music, etc.

And while unofficial, the access the McCain Blogette has is unprecedented. The blog in itself documents a presidential campaign in more detail and from a more personal perspective than we have ever Read the rest of this entry ?

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