Traffic on YouTube related to the 2008 presidential race spiked in March and April, largely on two unofficial, critical videos, one about Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, the other about Republican John McCain, according to a study of YouTube traffic by Nielsen/Net Ratings.

An anti-Clinton "1984" video, in which the New York senator is portrayed as a Big Brother-ish figure, accounted for about 75% of all traffic to candidate-related videos on YouTube in March, Nielsen found.

Nielsen found a far greater number of unique visitors watched Democratic candidate YouTube videos in March -- 1.54 million visitors, compared with Republicans' 108,000 visitors. But that number was high because of the anti-Clinton "1984" video, which was produced by a supporter of her leading rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. By April, traffic had stabilized, Nielsen found, and both sides attracted 300,000-400,000 unique viewers on YouTube.

Mrs. Clinton's Web videos drew the most attention, drawing 23.2% of the total time in April spent by YouTube visitors viewing political videos. Mr. Obama followed with 20%. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was third, at 16.1%

The Republicans followed, led by Mr. McCain, who drew 14.9% of all political viewing time. His two main rivals -- former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- lagged behind at 6.2% and 1.3%, respectively.

Submitted by aki - 2007-06-13 05:46:20
Channels - fallonplanningblog
Tags - advertising politics 2.0 political election 08

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