The next President of the United States has a MySpace, YouTube Channel and blogs. The 2008 Presidential Campaigns have been some of the most exciting to date and it’s only February! PQ Media is predicting and all-time high in advertising, media and marketing expenditures teetering around $4.50 billion. And according to Market Charts, the greatest area of growth is expected in internet ad spending up an estimated 83.9% compared with 2006 and totaling some $73 million by election day.
The freedom of information exchange across the internet is a campaign PR professional’s worst nightmare. At any moment something can be posted throwing a huge wrench into the mix either positively or negatively. What is most interesting to me about the increased web traffic for candidates, is that it is not the approved messages out there but the viral effects. It just goes to prove that organizations are becoming increasingly decentralized and the political realm is no different. The following video was released by dipdive.com and is propelling the viral video concept to new levels.
The YouTube Generation
Yesterday, I was curious as to candidates use of the virtual video world so I logged into YouTube’s You Choose 2008. There I found each candidate’s channel on the right, John McCain and Mike Huckabee and the left Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. As I clicked through the uniformed channels I thought, "Wow! What a great way to reach an audience." I wanted check the amount of channel views for each candidate to see if this new-age medium could act as a barometer of public opinion. What I found was staggering.
The total views on the Republican side were less than the views of Hillary Clinton around 1.3 million. Then I visited Obama’s. 11.9 million views! Those numbers are huge. I have yet to hear a media outlet report this major number of voters making hits to educate themselves on the political views of presidential hopefulls. My generation is tech savvy and when cnet.com promoted Obama saying he was “google-like” it obviously struck a chord with young voters. I’m not here to promote Obama or any other candidate just surfing the web and watching the waves of change.
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