Thanks for Commenting
Mario,
Has anyone done a study on the percentage of your typical primary voters who spends time on the web? I believe the web is widely used by democratic primary voters and that McCain money may show to be even more wisely spent in the long run. I am just no sure if Republican primary voters are on the web much. I hate to typecast, but that is my instinct.
I know the Republican party has been hit for not using the web as strongly as the democrats, but I know drudge enjoys a large amount of hits. So what's missing?
Fred,
I'm not aware of any study that addresses your question directly. However, if you are typecasting the R primary voter as older - I'm going out on a limb here - then there are studies out there that clearly demonstrate that the older demographic is one of the fastest growing segments of net users.
Another point to consider is that this older demographic is more likely to seek information to read before making a decision. I would agree that campaigns that are using keyword advertising will benefit in the general election. Essentially, they are looking at receiving a tremendous amount of national impressions for the candidates name at practically no cost.
Mario
I'm not sure what I was trying to imply except that are the Democrats taking better advantage of the web because there more people in the web that lean their way to take advantage of.
Either way I agree with you that all candidates should take advantage of it. I think those who use the web for their news tend to be searching for the truth and are open minded. The exact audience politicians search for.
There is no doubt what Drudge has done gave the Republicans an advantage, but sites such as Media Matters and Talking Points Memo have been making the big impact lately.
Mario,
While searching for the 'truth', I found an article that will be in Mondays Washington Post dealing with the Parties work on the internet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...ml?
hpid=topnews
Mario,
I also use Google Alerts to keep up with the politics. It's nice to get the MSM stories and the blogger stories next to each other.
I also agree that John McCain is doing a very good job of using Google Ads. When compared to other Presidential candidates anyway -- he hasn't got the targeting down yet, advertising on liberal blogs like Daily Kos and such.
Also, it is still very early in the game, I know there were some Democrats who used targeted Google ads very well in 2006. As it gets nearer to the primaries, I'm sure we will start seeing nothing but ads for Giuliani, Clinton, McCain and Obama on our respective blogs.
And Fred, I agree the Democrats have better organization (the netroots vs rightroots), but that is a totally different discussion.
Mario, et al.,
I love Google Alerts. In addition to that, you can set up an iGoogle homepage with additional tabs and have RSS/news feeds pointing to that tab. It's a great way to keep all of your RSS feeds in one location.
And of course y'all probably know about FeedDemon and Bloglines to keep track of your RSS feeds online as well.
I think your points about buying keywords and SEO are interesting and very important, especially given that the Internet has finally hit that Late Majority stage (see Diffusion of Innovation by UNM's own late Dr. Everett Rodgers for the lowdown) and an older demographic is finally joining their grandkids online.
That same older demographic (I believe, I'll check my data) is also more likely to vote than those same grandkids. So now is the time for these campaigns to pump more resources into the web to focus on those new (older) surfers.
Just my $.02, about $.00643 after taxes. 
Ben
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