Well, out of control of old media, that is. In the Washington Times, Matthew Sheffield explains, “Candidates use Web for cheap, edgy ads”. Your friend and humble narrator is mentioned here, right after Matthew discusses McCain’s “The One” ad, which pokes fun at a certain obscure young Chicago community organizer’s rapid rise to the dizzying heights Hollywood stardom:
Besides demonstrating how the Web can be cost-effective, “The One” phenomenon is illustrative of another way the Internet has become useful for the presidential campaigns: helping them spot organic political themes that they can help develop into larger ones. The inspiration behind the ad is straight out of the conservative blogosphere where it has proven enormously popular with center-right readers long dissatisfied with the elite press’ love affair with Mr. Obama.
That inspiration isn’t restricted to just online ads, either. Just this week, the McCain camp released an ad that looked astonishingly similar to a parody ad created by blogger Ed Driscoll, which combined Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s famous “3 AM” ad with a second segment telling viewers that Mr. McCain also could be relied upon to respond to a crisis situation.
It’s highly likely this will continue to happen, Mr. Driscoll told me in an e-mail.
“While a campaign still has to spend large sums of money buying advertising time on TV, as the older generation still glued almost exclusively to the television tube begins to fade away, watch for the Web to continue to grow in power as the political advertising venue,” he said.
He’s exactly right. It’s simply a matter of time.
Matthew was of course instrumental in organizing the sprawling Newsbusters blog. He emailed me yesterday afternoon alerting me that the above article would be online today, and asked me if I was in St. Paul. I wrote back that indeed I was–and was immediately following him on C-Span in this online video shot on Wednesday.
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