Search News: Will McCain be America’s First Search President?
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Written By Noah Mallin | September 8, 2008 | Share This
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One of the first posts I did for SearchViews asked whether Obama would be America’s first search President. At the time Senator Obama had just emerged from a bruising primary battle with Hillary Clinton: his more sophisticated search engine and social media strategy was a major contributing factor to his win. At the end of the post I pointed out that John McCain was beginning to take a very aggressive strategy towards search marketing and wondered whether this would force Obama to step up his game even more.
Well, as Reprise Media Managing Partner Joshua Stylman pointed out Friday on The Huffington Post while Obama continues to focus on social media McCain has solidified his lead in spending on search engine advertising. Even more crucial, McCain’s search campaign is far more sophisticated than Obama’s surprisingly old-fashioned approach.
Why is search so important? While social media is a great way to attract and rally core supporters we are at the point in the election where both candidates are trying to sway undecideds and independents. Poll results show a race that seems neck and neck. Search reaches people who are doing just that – searching - in this case for answers on where the candidates stand, what their bios are, and how their policies might affect their lives. It could be the most powerful point at which to reach an undecided voter (the same holds true for consumers).
The McCain campaign clearly gets this. While Obama sticks to fairly standard keyword buys of his and Biden’s names, McCain’s campaign is buying up his opponent’s names as well as generic issues keywords (”energy crisis”) and in many cases sending them to relevant and well though-out landing pages. As Josh points out in his post, ”The McCain ad for the search term “Joe Biden” asks users “What Does Joe Biden Say About Barack Obama?” and leads them to McCain’s attack ad which uses Biden’s own words against Obama. The same ad runs when users search for Obama’s name as well.”
What’s really worrisome for Democrats is just as McCain is ratcheting up his search spending (and poll numbers), Obama is cutting his spend back significantly – by nearly 20% according to Nielsen Online. Remember, Obama is massively outspending McCain online everywhere except search. This is a prescription for disaster for the Obama campaign just at the time he needs to be persuading the least partisan voters – the independents and undecideds - that he speaks for them.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Reprise Media, SEM: Ad Creative, SEM: Keyword Generation, Search: News |
Wow interesting data. Well, I hope Obama steps up his search game!!