Obama Ad Strategy Heavy on Web Use
If you want to know what a few extra million here and there can do for a presidential campaign, then it is educational to look at how Sen. Barack Obama is using the Web to reach his audience in Texas and Ohio compared to Sen. Hillary Clinton.
techPresident reports that Obama's campaign in running "huge video-enabled billboard ads" on four Ohio sites as well as 12 in Texas, along with several newspaper sites in both states.
Like some other display and video-enabled ads placed by '08 presidential campaigns thus far, the new Obama ads serve a dual purpose of persuasion and direct response. In this case, embedded TV spots mentioning issues like healthcare, the war in Iraq and middle class tax cuts act as persuasion tools while a big, red "Go" button takes users to a form to find the nearest place to vote early. Both Texas and Ohio allow voters to cast their ballots before primary day at locales like the county clerk's office.
Clinton, however, "doesn't seem to be running Web display ads at all" according to techPresident.
There could be two reasons for this development: The Clinton campaign is being careful with its money, hoping that they'll need to spend it fighting for more delegates after March 4; the Clinton camp recognizes that is primarily a younger audience on the Web that has already largely gone to Obama - buying web ads could be seen as throwing good money after bad.
5:30 PM ET | 02-29-2008 | permalink
