Obama Trumps McCain in Online Buzz

Recent figures released by Nielsen Online showed that despite all the recent buzz surrounding Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the online buzz was still focused largely on the presidential candidates: Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

Obama topped the list of the top 20 speakers at the Democratic and Republican national conventions with an online buzz index of 100. (The top speaker is always pegged at 100.)

McCain followed with an index of 97. Palin notched an 80, while Senator Hillary Clinton was pegged at 33. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden was fifth on the list with an index of 26.

President George W. Bush (12), Michelle Obama (12), Bill Clinton (11), Cindy McCain (5), and Ted Kennedy (5) rounded out the top 10.

Nancy Pelosi (4), Mitt Romney (4), Al Gore (4), Joe Lieberman (4), Rudy Giuliani (3), Fred Thompson (3), Mike Huckabee (3), Laura Bush (2), Jimmy Carter (2), and Mark Warner (2) rounded out the bottom 10 of the top 20 list.

BarackObama.com still maintains a healthy lead over JohnMcCain.com in terms of weekly unique audiences, but Obama’s site saw a jump of just 32% during the week of the Democratic National Convention, compared to a jump of 242% for McCain’s site during the same week. McCain has Palin to thank for this healthy online bump.

For the week ending 8/31, BarackObama.com attracted more than 3.4 million unique visitors, while JohnMcCain.com drew a shade under 1.8 million visitors.

McCain’s camp improved its online advertising game during August, increasing its image-based impressions 254%, from 16.5 million in July to 58.3 million in August. The Republican presidential candidate also saw its sponsored search link impressions increase 43%, from 15.1 million in July to 21.6 million in August.

Obama’s “Obama for America” campaign saw its image- based impressions drop 48%, from 417 million in July to 216 million in August. Its sponsored search link impressions also dropped 18%, from 1.2 million in July to 949,000 in August.

Obama for America has spent more than $5 million on online advertising in 2008 as of the end of July. Over $3 million has been spent with Google, while $618,005 has been spent with Yahoo!

Sources:
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_080908.pdf

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630772