Search News: How Election 08 Became a Boon to Key Online Platforms – The Final Post (We Mean it!) on the Election
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 7, 2008 | Share This
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The election is over, which means many of us will have to go back to obsessing about other stuff – the economy, fantasy sports leagues, Neko Case- whatever floats your boat. Still, in reviewing the last two years of what has surely been the most exciting and fascinating election of a lifetime it’s worth noting not just the impact of online platforms on the election – on which much has and will be written. The inverse effect has been less noted - the fact that the elction also impacted the platforms that exists online.
So what was the impact of the election on online platforms?
Minimal. Hah, just kidding. In fact it was quite substantial and fascinating to see:
This has been a touchstone example of the strength of Obama’s campaign online but interest in all of the candidates and the election in general led to increases in traffic over the summer to sites like Huffington Post (grouped here as social media because of its blog backbone) but also to generalized platforms like Facebook. On Facebook and eventually Twitter (when they added their special election tools) user engagement was markedly increased by the election chatter, applications, and events. Twitter made it especially easy to see what states were called by which networks and news organizations virtually instantaneously.
Online Video
The election was a boon to online video with SNL parodies vying with interview footage and campaign ads – all of which drove huge numbers to Google, Hulu and their competitors. If there was any doubt, online video is here to stay and the bite sized chunks of most of these zingers were ideally suited to the medium.
Flickr
Rather late in the game Flickr is experiencing it’s own election boom – crashing today under the weight of viewers piling in to see an exclusive photo-set of the Obamas on election night.
Integrated Marketing
Both the Obama and McCain campaigns were slow in setting up their search marketing to catch the voters and donors driven to search engines by their online ads and news coverage but they eventually got the hang of it – becoming very good indeed. The growth of online video drives the point home – though there was a significant chunk of web-only viral videos there were also many that originated on television before becoming online hits. Can there be any doubt now that offline drives online which can in turn drive offline actions?
Topics: Advertising: Offline, Advertising: Online, Blogging, Facebook, Media Convergence, Online Video, SEM: Paid Search, Search: News, Search: Video, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, YouTube |