Trumblog

Nielsen/NetRatings is reporting that Barack Obama’s website attracted the most unique visitors in the month of July compared to any of the other presidential candidates at 717,000. Hillary Clinton’s site led with the longest time per visitor with 8:17. The top republican candidates in those two categories were Fred Thompson, who was undeclared in July, with 381,000 unique visitors and Rudy Giuliani with 7:33. Where the Republicans do seem to be standing out are with online advertising where John McCain dominated with 7,699,000 impressions.

The democrats are also leading in the popularity of videos on YouTube with 475,000 unique visitors compared to 275,000 for Republicans, but Republican viewers are watching for 3.5 minutes as compared to 1.5 minutes for Democratic content. This could be one of those Howard Stern events where people who hate him watch him longer than those who love him, but I’ll give Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they are really enjoying those videos.

I’ll say it again that I think the Democrats influence on the web is an indication of the party’s demographics, not the power of their message, but the mood of the country clearly is helping. The individual traits of the candidates is also mirrored in these results. Barack Obama and Fred Thompson are exciting right now and people want to check out his website. Hillary Clinton’s engenders extreme love or hate and that drives engagement. But the experience that leaders are having now should benefit them in the long term. Leading in these key metrics will encourage effort in online marketing which provides them with opportunities to learn from successes and mistakes. This experience should lead to future online successes for the candidate during the primary and then the party during the general election.