Commentary
Top Political Video Searches, Ads and Site Traffic
- by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, October 3, 2012
From Mitt Romney’s 47% video to the millions of views of political convention speeches, online video has proved to be a vital tool in the presidential election. But what are Internet users seeking out on their own with political videos? The political searches Web users conduct offer a window into what’s on their minds and what they’re looking for.
Online audience measurement firm Hitwise shared with me the top ten political-themed video searches for the week ending Sept. 22. They were:
1. Romney video
2. Anti Islam video
3. Mitt Romney video
4. Anti Muslim video
5. Innocence of Muslim video
6. Mother Jones Romney video
7. Romney secret video
8. Offensive muslim video
9. Mitt Romney secret video
10. Anti Islam video Youtube
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Beyond search, the actions of users on the world’s biggest video site offers another glimpse into the political mindset of Web users. When it comes to downstream traffic, it appears that visitors to multimedia sites like YouTube, who then go on to visit a political-related site, are much more apt to check out Barack Obama’s site, whose site visits double that of Mitt Romney in second place, according to Hitwise data for the week ending Sept. 29. Rounding out the top five political sites visited after hanging out on YouTube and other multimedia sites were FoxNews.com, Real Clear Politics and the Western Center for Journalism.
When it comes to presidential ads, the most watched across the Web from September 8 through October 2 was Wake the F@#k Up from the Jewish Council for Education & Research with 2.9 million views, according to video measurement firm Visible Measures. That’s followed by Let My People Vote with 2.2 million views, Doors from Priorities USA Action with 1.4 million, We’ve Heard it All Before from the RNC with 1 million, and Watch the 2012 DNC Live from Barack Obama with 970,000, also according to Visible Measures.
Can any conclusions be drawn from this Web data on who might win? You won’t get that from me. But this much is clear - both the candidates and the voters are tuning into online videos.
Just today I watched a 2007 video where it appears that Obama suggests that the needs of people who live in suburbs be ignored. Perhaps, for every video example of one candidate seemingly excluding one group of voters (e.g., the 47%), someone can locate with a counterpoint video of an opponent doing the same. It's all politics, and in the eye of the beholder.