Targeted Advertising

Barack Obama has outspent John McCain in overall campaign advertising, but in at least one overlooked area of ad spending, McCain enjoys a dramatic lead. Despite the Obama campaign's image as the more tech-savvy of the two, it's McCain who has invested much more heavily in search engine advertising, according to analysis from Nielsen Online released Friday.

For two consecutive months, McCain beat Obama in the number of impressions purchased on search engines such as Google, paying to ensure that Web users see links to JohnMcCain.com along with their search results. Statistics for June show McCain bought 7 million impressions, compared with 1.15 million for Obama. That's an increase for McCain, who purchased 5.4 million impressions the previous month, and a decrease for Obama, from 1.8 million.

Obama continued his dominance in banner advertising, however, which is traditionally more expensive than search. Obama bought 80 million banner impressions in June, compared with McCain's 16 million.

The McCain team's affinity for search engine advertising began while facing a tight budget during the primary. His advisers say targeted advertising helped him beat better-funded opponents then and will help again now.

The reason search engine buys can be more cost-effective is that they eliminate some of the guesswork traditionally associated with other forms of advertising. The campaign selects exactly where to spend money online after calculating how much it pays per lead to its site.

"We obviously have limited resources in this campaign as compared to Barack Obama, so we have to spend in the most effective way," said e-campaign director Michael Palmer. "We found that form of advertising, where you are getting people who are already looking for something, is a very cost-effective way of getting those people to our site and getting them to do the things we want them to do."

Take for example the McCain campaign's efforts to woo Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters who might be unconvinced that Obama has what it takes to answer the ringing red phone.

While Bill Clinton was telling a TV reporter in Africa, "You could argue that no one's ever ready to be president," users who entered a Google search for "McCain Clinton" found a text ad boasting of the Republican: "No On The Job Training Needed to Be Commander In Chief." For more information, it sent users to "JohnMcCain.com/Experience," which isn't an actual URL. Google lets advertisers create colloquial addresses that disguise longer ones used for tracking the effectiveness of a landing page. Following the link brings visitors to a commercial originally released in March that touts McCain's leadership. An announcer's resounding voice says the next president must believe in protecting America, and he asks, "What must we believe about that president? What does he think? Where has he been? Has he walked the walk?" The ad ends with footage of McCain as a prisoner of war, reciting his serial number to his captors.

Tracy Russo, formerly of John Edwards' online campaign, is known for criticizing McCain's admitted lack of familiarity with using the Internet. But even she's impressed with his campaign's use of search advertising.

"That's a lot more savvy than we've seen from them in a lot of other things," said Russo, president of her online political strategy firm, Russo Strategies.

Still, she said almost all candidates could do more. Instead of focusing just on names, they could emphasize issues.

"All of the candidates should be advertising on gas prices right now," she said. "If you Google to try and figure out where the lowest prices for gas are in town, then you should see an ad for Barack Obama on how he's going to break the grip of foreign oil. You have to go after people where they are. You can't just expect they are going to come to you. You have to think, OK, what is the public searching for right now?"

Obama actually did some of this during the primary campaign, using search engine advertising to fight Internet rumors about his religion. A Google search for "Barack Obama Muslim" returned an ad asserting, "Barack Obama is a Christian. Get the facts at his official site."

After seeing the ad, online marketing expert Daljit Bhurji, who cofounded the Diffusion public relations agency in London, touted Obama's marketing strategy to his clients. It was the first time he'd seen search engine ads used to promote a message instead of a product.

"In the U.K., I have noticed there have been a couple of crises which have affected brands, and they have been quite quick to use Google AdWords as a way to counteract that crisis or counteract rumors," said Bhurji, who credits Obama's campaign with being ahead of a trend.

After more accurate information about Obama's religion spread online, Google's "organic" search results now point to Obama's site for free. And Bhurji hasn't seen the ads since. (Outside groups, both for and against Obama, have since ponied up for the terms.)

Although optimizing a Web site to earn better placement in free search results is a best practice, Bhurji still advises clients to purchase ads. Studies have shown that when a site appears within the free results and also within the sponsored section, searchers consider it more credible.

The problem is not everyone can be the top sponsored ad. Buying ads on Google is like participating in an auction. So if every candidate across the country advertised as aggressively as McCain, then a bidding war for popular keywords could emerge. Everyone agrees that the higher on the list a site appears, the more likely it is to be clicked.

Deciding when to outbid a competitor is a balancing act of goals versus a need to get the most for your money, said Mindy Finn, online strategist for former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"In my experience, issue words don't necessarily yield strong results like the candidate's names do," she said via e-mail. "If a campaign's goal for their search campaign is conversions, they may decide to yield the top spot on the issues and ensure they can devote the funds to the candidate's name."

Neither of the candidates has bought an impression around every search that mentions their name. But Obama has a lot more ground to cover. Google Trends data reports that people's searches in June included Obama's name more than three and a half times as often as McCain's.

Search engines are taking notice of the attention being paid by candidates across the country. Within the last year, Google created an "elections and issue advocacy" team that its manager, Peter Greenberger, describes as "small but growing," with five people so far. He's watched as the advertising evolves.

"Early in the cycle, campaigns were interested in gathering e-mail addresses and raising money from the base," Greenberger said. "In this stage, you are seeing more of an effort at persuasion."

He speculates that as the persuasion phase intensifies, candidates might become more interested in banner advertising.

"You are not looking for that active voter who maybe knows who he or she is voting for," he said. "You are looking for that more passive voter who is reading information but not quite ready to commit."