McCain using paid video and search ads for ’08 feeler

By Steve Safran 

It’s very interesting to see how the presidential hopefuls are dipping a toe in the web. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all announced their runs online. They have various degrees of blogs and sites now. Republican Sen. John McCain is taking a different approach: he’s going with sponsored search text and paid video ads along with more traditional display ads. A Google search for “John McCain” turns up the paid ad that leads to exploreMcCain.com, the site for his exploratory committee. However, a search for “Campaign 2008” turns up the Giuliani exploratory site as the paid ad. And nobody comes up for “presidential campaign 2008.” Free advice for campaigns: don’t just buy your own name for a keyword. Buy as many variations on “president,” “campaign,” “2008” and more.

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