Web Gets Obama (Chump) Change

Ed: Global advertising is $1.5 trillion. Google's share is $20 billion. Not surprising that Obama's online share is so small.

Web Gets Obama (Chump) Change

from ClickZ News Blog

Barack Obama's campaign spent over $3 million on TV ads in one state on Monday. 

He's spent about double that on the Websince January.

Yep, according to my calculations based on FEC reports, his campaign spent around $5.45 million on paid online media on the Web, into August.

How's that for sharp contrast?

As I wrote in my recent Reuters commentary piece on Obama's online ads: 

The fact is political advertisers typically don't use Internet ads to sway voters the way they do television ads. When it comes to the Web, they rely on things like video on YouTube and their official sites to have persuasive impact.

Not only is advertising on television a tough-to-break habit for political campaigns, they have yet to see online ads affect an election in an undeniable way.

Until there's proof that an online ad moved people to vote for or against a candidate, the first full-fledged Internet election may be far off.