In light of our recent political happenings we have naturally had politics on the brain. We thus could'nt help but investigate the intersection of politics and Online Marketing and there is no better example than the Obama campaign.

Like in any other online sphere, usability is key and one thing I learnt during my research into how the Internet is being used in the current American electoral campaigns, is that it is a good idea to make supporting an electoral candidate as easy as possible. So, with that here's this week's Friday Fact Box.

From WashingtonPost.com - Obama Sets New Online Record (February 2008) 

• Barack Obama raised $28 million in one month during March 2008 on the Internet
• Howard Dean (the first Internet candidate) raised $27 million during his whole campaign this way
• 90% of Obama’s donations were $100 or less
• Only 40% of Obama’s donations were $25 or less

From The Clickz Network - Google Grabs Most of Obama's $5 Million in Online Ad Spending (September 2008)

What is Barack Obama’s ROI? From January to July 2008:

• He spent over $5 million on Online Advertising
• Nearly 59% of this expenditure went to Google (more than $3 million) and its content network
• Yahoo came in 2nd receiving a paltry 12% ($681 000) 
• Social Networking sites garnered only 4% of his budget
• Facebook got in there with $111 974
• CNN.com and Microsoft each got $215 000
• MySpace only managed $11 500

From the Wired blog - McCain's Web Site Traffic Surges, But Obama Still Leads Online (July 2008)
Traffic stats for both McCain and Obama during July 2008:

• McCain received a total of 807,518 unique visitors
• Obama received more than 2.5 million visitors
• Even Hillary Clinton received more visitors than John McCain - upwards of a cool million

From Marketingvox - Youth Voters, Obama Supporters Lead Online Political Charge (August 2008)

• 40 percent of all Americans have gotten news and information about this year's campaign from the internet
• 19 percent of Americans go online once a week or more to do something related to the campaign, and 6 percent go online daily to engage politically
• 23 percent say once a week or more they receive emails that urge them to support a candidate or discuss the campaign
• 10 percent use email once a week or more to contribute to the political debate
• 4 percent have exchanged political views via text messaging
• 35 percent of Americans say they have watched online political videos - nearly triple the level of the 2004 race
• 10 percent say they have used social-networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns
•  6 percent of Americans have made political contributions online, compared with 2 percent who did during the entire 2004 campaign