• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 5, 2008

It was perhaps the most successful online presidential campaign yet. And MediaPost's Search Insider Summit attendees were treated to a rare look inside Barack Obama's online strategy during a town hall discussion Thursday in Park City, Utah, which kicked off the three-day event.

Emily Williams--Interactive account executive at MSHC Partners, who worked on the online campaign early on--provided insights with Ben Ben Seslija, senior director of analytics at Clickable and Corina Constantin, director of decision services at Didit Labs. Gordon Hotchkiss, CEO and president of Enquiro, led the discussion.

Some attendees wanted to know whether the strategy of purchasing the opposition's keywords was effective. Williams said the strategy "was a little more calculated" than that; when a story broke the Obama campaign would try to obtain certain terms, but bidding on McCain-related words was not an ongoing strategy.

The developing economic crisis did not shift the focus of Obama's online advertising, but the team did add issue-related terms later in the campaign. The overall strategy remained in place, and everything Williams' team at MSHC did was consistent with other parts of the campaign. (MSHC was the first major political communications firm to open an Internet division and make Internet advertising and online tactics an important part of its communications strategies.)

Constantin said Obama's online campaign was more traditional than many realized. He managed to create a brand. He didn't build much on issues until the end of the campaign, but rather built enthusiasm for change. He created online buzz offline and spurred electronic word of mouth. The buzz he created online built a remarkably effective campaign. But Constantin questioned whether that occurred because the audience already was online or because the strategy brought the audience online.

McCain initially was viewed as having a savvier approach to search. Citing Nielsen stats, Constantin said, paid search traffic estimates for the McCain campaign reached 21.6 million search impressions in August, compared with Obama's 949,000.

Soon after, the presidential nominees began to bid more on issues related to keyword terms, rather than brand. It is difficult to compare campaigns, because Obama focused on brand-building and creating online and offline buzz, whereas McCain focused on issues, Constantin said.

Didit conducted user behavioral research related to whether people vote Republican, Democratic or independent. The research found that most people refused to believe they used sponsored links. About 50% said they would never click on sponsored links, yet they had to click on a sponsored link to take the survey. A little more than 12% indicated that they were not aware of sponsored links.