Google taps US presidential race
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/29/googlethemedia.digitalmedia


Google has opened an advertising sales office in Washington DC after adapting its online targeting techniques for niche demographics to aid political campaigning in the 2008 presidential race
Republican presidential candidates John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudolph Guiliani and Mitt Romney and their Democrat counterparts Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all signed up to use Google's Adwords and AdSense targeted advertising programmes to help their campaigns.
Staffed by 25 people, they will help to set up web campaigns for the political parties.
The candidates' campaigns typically buy up ads to appear next to relevant search results through the AdWords or through the AdSense, which places targeted ads on relevant sites.

By using the Internet as a source of political advertising, as the parties would be able to target certain demographics, in addition to persuading new voters to choose their political party - this would be done by placing adverts on specific websites. Also the Internet is used by millions of people each day, so candidates are targeting mass audiences.