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No surprise - it's the Senator for Illinois, followed by the former First Lady:

The Republican nominee has some catching up to do - no doubt because the Democratic nomination contest siezed the media's attention in the UK. Barack Obama clearly leads both.

This got me thinking...what factor did Bill Clinton play, or not play, in his wife's defeat? A quick search shows up an interesting trend; Hillary's biggest spike in the UK was triggered by Bill Clinton criticizing the press' attitude to Obama...and search volumes for them both started to converge as volume for "Hilary Clinton" declined.

 

 

The same happened in the US, too, although with a different pattern. Seems Senator Clinton could never escape the former President, even online.

 

 

Note: the US elections receives heavy coverage in the UK and there are over 155,000 Americans in Britain.

However, these financial shoppers did constitute an attractive target for marketers, as they tended to have good credit, medium-to-high incomes and be well educated and employed full-time. Online application rates varied widely, from a high with credit cards to a low with savings accounts. Likewise, the importance of brand or category terms fluctuated according to the type of product or service, but overall, the field seemed relatively open.

Fast forward two years and the landscape looks considerably more crowded. With financial services as with many other industries, customer acquisition has become more challenging and also costlier as brands are crowded out by resellers and other lead aggregators. Consequently, getting the right information onto the first page of search results is harder than ever, yet also increasingly crucial.

Data from researchers ranging from Forrester to comScore to Jupiter show search to more ingrained than ever in the financial service research process. How to compete in this environment? Trying to outspend the lead aggregators is a losing game, but providing and promoting quality information through search is a strategy worth considering. Consumers are asking the questions, and the big financial services companies could find a hook by giving them the answers they're looking for.

For months now, I’ve been watching the candidates and the issues. And I’ve been watching them on-line more than I have off-line. Like most people, the search engines have been the gateway to my research and in many cases the candidates have not had a strong enough search engine presence. Yet they should. The audience after all, is there.
 
A recent report showed that over 85% of relevant searches conducted are issues-related. Of these, the most popular issues are health care
(49%), the economy (49%), the war in Iraq (48%) and gas prices (44%). Barack Obama is by far the most active candidate online. But even he is not doing all that can be done. While Obama is appearing high in the natural search listings for some search terms, for example ‘health care’, he is not appearing for ‘war in Iraq’ or ‘Iraq’ which receive approx. 3million searches a month on Google alone. By using search engine marketing he could be getting his stand on this issue across clearly and inexpensively. Surely, in a race that is so close among the Democratic candidates, and one that will be highly contested when the Democratic v. Republican fight begins, using the power of search marketing, and in particular, the immediacy of paid search, is a tactic that the candidates should use to its fullest to reach, educate and inform. The American people through the search engines are asking the questions. The candidates need to be there to answer them.

The survey takes approx. 15 min's to complete via this link.

Just take this survey about the UK digital industry, apparently approved by the IAB.

 

Read more here.

Source: VNU