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Counting UVs To Political Websites
Those of us who have been working in the web business for the past 12 years have become obsessed with page views and unique visitors (UVs). Building a large and growing web audience has been the single most important metric for value creation.
In the political world, the metric seems to be money. We learned last week that Hillary raised $25mm, Obama raised $20mm, and so did Mitt Romney. John McCain only raised $12.5mm and apaprently is in trouble.
But if I was running a campaign I’d be paying close attention to my web audience. As Howard Dean showed last time around, you can raise a lot of money from the rank and file supporters if you have a strong web strategy.
And so I found these numbers from comScore interesting:
I wondered why comScore only published numbers for Hillary and Barack. Then I did some more research and found out that the leading Republican candidates' websites have smaller audiences than this blog:
For those of you who are Edwards fans, his web audience according to Compete is about 100k UVs, larger than any of the Republicans, but much smaller than Hillary and Barack's.
Two months don’t tell a particularly interesting story, but it’s clear that Obama is holding his own against Hillary on the web as well as the fundraising front. And based on my experience with both candidate’s web sites, I’d say Obama has a much stronger web presence. It’s real, authentic, social, and involving. Hillary’s is like her campaign, solid, professional, and unengaging.
comScore published some more data that’s interesting.
And
Hillary’s web audience is older and wealthier. Obama’s is younger and less affluent. I suppose that bodes well for Hillary because her audience is more likely to contribute, organize, and vote.
But as I said earlier in this post, two months don't tell much of a story. These are baseline numbers to watch. What's important is how this changes over time. What if Barack's web audience becomes wealthier and whiter? What if his web audience continues to grow while the other candidates' websites flatten out?
I'd like to see comScore start tracking all of the six major candidates' websites even though only two of them meet their traffic/audience cutoffs. The web is the most powerful information service out there because everything people do on it is so measurable. This is important data and I'd like to see it reporterd at least every month for the remainder of the 2008 presidential race.
Comments (13) | Posted April 8, 2007 in Politics , Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
Great post fred.
i heard on npr last week that internet donations made up 6% of Obama's war chest.
I also understand that Obama's has significantly more individual donors - each one contributing about $100. so he can hit them up again and again conceivably
but all in all these Obama and Clinton total numbers are stunning and saddening to me.
democrats would argue that they don't want to unilaterally disarm and who could blame them.
I guess in a 2 party race I'm leaning towards Edwards but still learning about each candidate. Still haven't wrote a check of my own yet.
but we need a viable third party now more than ever in my view. this big money is making it hard.
Posted by: bijan | Apr 8, 2007 10:19:37 AM
That is fascinating! It will be interesting to see how the election plays out and whether or not visits per website will be a helpful predictor of a candidate. Perhaps we can finally kill the inaccuracy of polling!
I'm with bijan, it is time this country built a viable, reasonable third party that represents the majority of Americans instead of the extremes.
Posted by: Douglas Karr | Apr 8, 2007 10:40:44 AM
Great data, and yes it's early, but I think everyone (the players) is still afraid of the internet, using it as a passive tool, rather than using a pro-active approach. Every speach should contain a phrase like; "visit my web site, see what I'm about, engage me, talk to me. My site is open 24/7, so stop by, I would love to here from you".
So far I'm not hearing this sort of thing from anyone as they all seem to be stuck playing by the old (campaign) rules.
Posted by: Stephen L. McKay | Apr 8, 2007 1:26:57 PM
Maybe one day somebody will get elected based on the quality of their ideas rather than the girth of their bank accounts..........probably not.
Posted by: jackson | Apr 8, 2007 1:48:49 PM
Understanding the caveat that this is too short a duration from which to glean any serious understanding, I do find it most interesting that Obama's site (per the first Demo chart) shows a more even spread across demo groups (versus the clearer skew of Hillary's data).
It would seem to indicate that his Web strategy is as equally accessible as the candidate himself. And that's a testament to how non-exclusive / pro-inclusive the technologies of the last few years really are.
Money quotient aside, it will be interesting to note how these strategies will affect actual voter turnout if that can be measured via exit polls etc.
Posted by: Michael | Apr 8, 2007 2:10:46 PM
Fred Wilson for Mayor of New York City!
Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | Apr 8, 2007 4:22:40 PM
"I actually clicked on Obama's website, before I clicked off of it." -- Senator John Kerry, August 5th, 2008
Posted by: Andy Swan | Apr 9, 2007 12:01:26 AM
This is a great post it applies to all of us trying to get traffic to our websites. What chance do we have if political sites which have millions of dollars and are meant to appeal to millions of voters attract such little traffic, particularly the ones ranked third and later in the list? I guess it takes brain power as well and net expertise. I begin to understand why people are almost pleased to attract litigation which gets great media attention. Or maybe people are fed up with politicians which certainly appears to the case in the UK. Must keep changing my site to find the market...
Posted by: Philip Baddeley | Apr 9, 2007 3:20:44 PM
Fred - I saw you present at the SIIA conf earlier this year, I thought you might be interested ina project my two close friends have been working on to see how Web_buzz really impacts our daily life or not. See their politics site, working with some MIT guy's they have somehow been able to (1) identify sex of the blog author and (2) +ve or -ve regards the editorial.
Have fun.... they also did another for baseball, I don't think I am allowed top give you the address for that one yet.
Posted by: jon sofield | Apr 9, 2007 4:54:57 PM
Fred, this is an awesome analysis -- I really hope such is a harbinger of super changes to come in election politics. since LBJ hammered Goldwater, the conventional wisdom has been that to win an election, you have to be master of TV advertising, and today that costs the amazingly humungous big bucks. hence the fascination with tracking fundraising. maybe, just maybe, the web can supplant TV advertising. maybe just maybe the populace will be attracted to a medium that can provide depth, not just glossy gorgeous images and sound bites. and maybe just maybe candidtaes and their handlers will be drawn to a medium that frees them from simple polls and media numbers, and allows them to measure and interact with constituents more directly.
then again, its a little hard to imagine running a campaign for president -- in front of what, 150 million voters -- and not gravitating towards massive scale and massive impact lowest common denominator media and messages. but even if its not "morning in america again," well, "i still believe in a place called hope." ;)
Posted by: Grand Egress | Apr 9, 2007 6:06:45 PM
Great post Fred. The demographic information seems spot on for both candidates (Hillary and Obama) based on their message and the audiences they've attracted thus far. I'm a member of the Obama team (although I like Hillary & Edwards as well), and I have to say that his website is phenomenal. From blogging to managing your own personal fundraising efforts, it's a breeze.
I'm reading his book, The Audacity of Hope, right now and he talks about the power of blogs, the internet, etc. quite a bit. I'd HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone, even if you're not planning on voting for him.
On a different note, I'd like to see you post your opinions on the op-out of the Fox news debates by both Obama and Edwards. The internet and blogging community have made it possible for candidates to circumvent big, biased media for the first time in US history. It's a beautiful thing. The internet is the great equalizer of the new world.
Posted by: Darren Johnson | Apr 10, 2007 1:49:01 AM
Even have a similar site we'd like to give good information about site.....Drive in qualified prospects and convert them into profitable customers. In other words; you need an efficient and cost effective means to – “Sell More Stuff To More People More Often For More Money”.....If you want more information about site click the link marketing
Posted by: Keown | Apr 11, 2007 2:38:01 AM
Well Nice information, But ehn everyone of them will need to get huge traffic, relevant trafic, will have to rule search engines they are the main source to show up the sites, and what people will use to search them.conservative politics
Posted by: Conservative Politics | Apr 24, 2007 7:01:01 AM
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