Which Presidential Candidate is Winning the War of the Web?

Published by on October 7, 2008

As this is a blog focused around online businesses, I thought it important to compare the two online marketing strategies and their results for both the Obama/Biden ticket and McCain/Palin for the 2008 Presidential election.

The Landing Page, Who Wins?

The Obama landing page focuses on one core goal: raising money. You enter in your name and contact information and register for a car magnet, a $15 donation. The page itself is well crafted and clean, and looks very web 2.0.

The McCain landing page has an auto-play video (don’t we all love those) but I think this plays well into the Yahoo! users, ie my parents. That enjoy talking video on websites. The video has Palin, the star of the campaign, but I think they really should have McCain doing the talking here.

The goal for this page isn’t as transparent as the Obama page, but the main video message is very clear: recruit your friends to be McCain supporters. The buttons on the side look very Web 1.0 and real-bleh.

Winner: BarackObama.com

The Traffic Wars

Winner: BarackObama.com

Online Advertising

The McCain/Palin campaign and their advertisements are all over my blog. In every anti-Palin post I write, there is a pro-Palin advertisement right alongside. Kudos to the McCain campaign for wonderful mastery of online advertising.

I suspect they hired an ad firm to do this work, anyone know who it is? They are doing a kick-ass job.

Good to see Obama is protecting himself online for the anti-smear campaigns.

I think it would be interesting to see which candidate is having the biggest support from the blogosphere in the form of activist commenters. The Dems and Republicans should have their supporters out on the HufPo and Conservative Blogs trashing each side showing support for their candidates, in a true grass-roots effort.

Winner: JohnMcCain.com

Results: Obama the Winner

Despite the McCain online campaign, Obama’s traffic supremacy and much stronger website (his anti-smear ads link to the website and specific articles), declare him the winner of the web.

Will Obama’s victory online translate into a victory at the polls? We’ll see in 2 months, until then, let us know if you think Obama really is winning the web or if McCain has some factors I’m missing.