• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 27, 2008

Hillary Clinton's campaign came under fire for spending extravagantly after disclosing it had dished out $25,000 for luxury rooms at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and $100,000 on party platters in Iowa, among other expenses last month.

But in spending on online social media and advertising, Clinton was easily outstripped by Democratic rival Barack Obama. Not a big surprise, given that Obama has run the most effective online campaign among the 2008 presidential candidates. Of the $32 million he raised in January, for example, $28 million came from online donors.

Even so, figures in the candidates' latest spending reports covering January underscore the gap in their online efforts. The Obama campaign paid more than $89,000 to Google and $18,252 to Microsoft for online advertising and a total of $32,372 to Yahoo and Yahoo Search Marketing. Obama paid another $23,564 to Yahoo subsidiary Right Media, an online ad exchange which handles mainly remnant advertising.

A further $1,821 went to Facebook, where Obama has attracted more "friends" than any other candidate, and $88,540 went to political consulting firm Blue State Digital.

The Clinton campaign, by contrast, reported only a $13,674 payment to Google during the same period.