It used to be that the most powerful way to hijack your opponent's image was to use it in a negative way in one of your own campaign ads. But now, thanks to some new "in-image" contextual ad technology, you can turn your opponent's image into an ad.

Apologies if today's Red, White &Blog Blog isn't 100% about the political media scene, but filing this via my smartphone, with no electricity and diminishing battery. The reason, of course, is the effects of Hurrican Sandy, which has knocked a good portion of some of America's biggest media markets off the commmunications grid. No electricity means no broadband, no TV, and throw us back into the stone age of battery operated transistor radio, candle light, and neighbors walking door-to-door to survey damage and exchange news updates. So what's the political connection? Well, it struck me a year ago after Hurricane …

If Theodore White wrote his landmark "The Making of The President" in 2012, instead of 1960 (or its sequels in 1964, 1968, and 1972) it would not be the major broadcast TV networks or powerful national newspapers that were the most influential sources of media in shaping the views of voters, but cable news channels, local TV stations, and increasingly, the Internet. Less than two weeks before Election Day, the Pew Research Center released findings of a new study indicating that the Web, not surprisingly, has emerged as the fastest growing source of campaign news for most Americans, and is …

So much for my theory that Clint Eastwood's empty chair-talking stunt during the Republican National Convention was actually a performance designed to sabotage Mitt Romney's big moment. While Clint's WTF act did steal some thunder and created a sense of weirdness leading into Romney's nomination acceptance speech, he apparently is a genuine Romney supporter, and appears in a new campaign ad to prove it.

Barack Obama won the battle -- literally -- for TV viewers during the final televised presidential debate Monday night. Obama's "battleship moment" -- the point when he countered Mitt Romney's assertion that the U.S. Navy has fewer ships than it did in 1916 by saying, "the question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships" -- was the most viewed moment, according to an analysis released this afternoon by TiVo Research and Analytics.

Given the dynamic real-time nature of political campaigns heading into their final lap, it's not surprising that the RTB marketplace for political advertising is soaring, according to just released estimates from Rubicon Project's third-quarter RTB Report.

I'm agitated by the upcoming presidential election. Not because I'm worried about the outcome, since I'm pretty confident my guy is going to win. Rather, as a media researcher, it boggles my mind that the election of the individual who is undoubtedly the most powerful person on the planet doesn't require much more rigorous standards in how he/she is selected.