How the Obama Campaign Is Betting Big on the Internet

The Obama campaign is shedding the traditional campaign model and focusing its advertising efforts on the Internet, a gamble that could cost them dearly, or help them write the book on how candidates engage their base online.

Politico has the story on how the Obama campaign is focusing their efforts on digital advertising and engagement for November's election. They've already spent more on digital advertising for this campaign than in 2008. Obama's created a, "holistic, totally in-house digital operation." One campaign official told Politico, "digital is no longer a part of the campaign. It is the campaign." They're using information pulled from Facebook and Twitter to help steer the messages they send out to certain demographics to earn the best response. They have full-time digital directors in about a dozen battleground states to help focus their message there. Requests for small donations, sometimes as low as $3, have raised tens of thousands of dollars for the campaign, and provided a wealth of information for the campaign.

The hope is their aggressive digital approach will be able to outwork and out reach the Romney campaign's. The Romney campaign admitted they were way behind in the digital department, mostly because of the drawn out primary process, but it was never going to be their first priority anyway. Their advertising focus is going to be more traditional, and supported by wealthy super-PACs and their well-financed television ads.

We don't want to use too much of their story, so encourage you to read the whole thing here.