Decision 2012: An Online Marketing Scorecard

In a scene from 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?', corrupt Southern politician Pappy O'Daniel shows he understands the power of New Media in electoral campaigns:



In 2012, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney 'get' online marketing, but a deeper look at the candidates' websites and marketing efforts shows Obama is clearly the better tactician. What follows is a comparison of the campaigns' website and online marketing technology usage, and my own verdict on who wins in each category:

SEM. Paid keywords: 1535 (Obama) vs 208 (Romney) [Per SpyFu] --> Obama wins

SEO. Organic ranking keywords: 1587 (Obama) vs 475 (Romney) [SpyFu] --> Obama wins

Display ads: 83 vs ZERO [MOAT]. It may just be that MOAT's not tracking Romney's ads, but I can't recall seeing any. According to this article, both candidates are making use of retargeting, but Obama destroys Romney based on the MOAT data.

Social. Both use FB Like & Twitter Follow buttons, but only Obama has a Twitter Tweet button, making it more likely he'll get key viral effect from social. --> Obama wins

Tracking. Obama using Chicago-grown tag management solution BrightTag, making his campaign more flexible and better able to understand & optimize against cross-channel attribution. --> Obama wins

Conversion Optimization. Romney appears to be the only one using any sort of A/B or MVT testing solution (Optimizely in Mitt's case, data from BuiltWith). --> Romney wins

Obama uses HTML5; Romney uses Flash. --> Obama wins on mobile.

OVERALL SCORECARD: Obama wins 6, Romney 1

If might equals right, Obama's cleaning Mitt's clock and setting the stage for another four years in the White House.