Just when it seemed the ailing economy, soaring oil prices and a historically unpopular president would doom John McCain’s electoral aspirations, a funny thing happened while Barack Obama and his media entourage were taking last month’s overseas mid-summer victory lap: America seems to have tired a bit of Obama’s celebrity status, dulling, at least slightly, his glow of invulnerability. Now, with the recent Georgia/Russia conflict causing voters to rethink Obama’s preparedness for the world stage, national polls narrowing, falling site traffic, not to mention 2012 aspirant Hillary Clinton’s posturing for another run, Obama’s success in the fall is less assured than it appeared only a few short weeks ago.

John McCain, given up for dead last summer, has had a surprisingly successful past couple of months. After almost of year of convincing most that his campaign lacked anything in the way of a cohesive online strategy, McCain’s camp has seized on the Internet of late to distribute satirical attack ads to define Obama for the American public. Like Mike Huckabee last winter, the relatively underfunded McCain camp has leveraged YouTube to generate free publicity for his campaign. The ads “Celeb” and “The One,” McCain’s most virally successful so far, along with the related well-publicized fight McCain picked with debutant Paris Hilton, helped the presumptive Republican nominee finally get voters to stop and consider that Obama still has to win in November before he can occupy the White House.

The FaceTime chart below illustrates the degree to which McCain, Obama and Ralph Nader are attracting the attention of voters and highlights the degree to which recent developments have helped McCain become much more competitive online. The FaceTime metric looks across candidates’ official websites as well as their related sites on places such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Meetup.com, to measure the total time voters spend with candidates. After months of trailing Obama by a nearly 9 to 1 margin, these well-timed videos helped McCain’s FaceTime share jump to 26% in July…not bad for a candidate mocked for his lack of web savvy.

McCain tactics seem to have worked, so one can only expect more of the same in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next week’s Democratic Convention will broadcast Obama into tens of millions of American homes. It will be interesting to see whether or not, under the scrutiny of the national stage and the pressure of a resurgent opponent, voters will see in Obama a man ready to lead the nation come January.

Fueled by a 65% rebound in visitors to his website, Barack Obama recently reported raising a near record $52 million during the month of June. This haul represented a significant boost from the $22 million he raised in May when he was still in a heated battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. While the total is indeed staggering, less reported was a recent Washington Post analysis that found that only $1.8 million (or 3.5%) of this sum was given by former Hillary Clinton donors.

Perhaps they are waiting for an olive branch vice presidential invitation. Or maybe, they are biding their time hoping Obama stumbles come November, paving the way for a Clinton resurrection in 2012. Whatever the underlying reason, it seems that Clinton’s most active supporters have yet to rally behind Obama.

The FaceTime chart below illustrates the degree to which the Democratic candidates have attracted the attention of voters throughout the race. The FaceTime metric quantifies the total amount of time voters spent online each month with candidates across their official website as well as their related sites on places such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Meetup.com. Even though Clinton ended her campaign on June 7th, for the month she still managed to grab 15% of Democratic FaceTime, while the remaining share went almost entirely to Obama.

Further, the chart below illustrates the degree to which Obama’s official website is attracting once active Hillary supporters (defined as those who made three or more website visits to HillaryClinton.com during the final two months of her candidacy). Through July 19th, Obama’s site had only managed to attract the attention of 11% of Clinton’s formerly active supporters.

In response, the Obama’s have recently ratcheted up their outreach to women, hoping to bring this large group of Clinton supporters into the fold. Of course Obama has proven himself to be a masterful organizer and fundraiser, able to raise millions at the drop of an email. With all Obama has going for him at this point in the race, and in lieu of all the baggage the GOP standard bearer (John McCain) carries, whether or not Clinton hold-outs fall in line may end up not really mattering come November.

Given the struggling economy, rampant Bush fatigue, and a host of other issues, any GOP candidate would seemingly have an insurmountable set of challenges to overcome this fall. John McCain’s task is even greater, in some respects, given that while he generally appeals to many moderates and independents, social conservatives (the traditionally large and influential wing of the party) have so far seen little to get excited about in his candidacy. That could be changing.

On the heels of traffic to McCain’s website jumping 90% in June, his campaign recently reported raising over $22M last month. While it comes as no surprise that his haul was well surpassed by rival Barack Obama’s $52M tally, McCain’s improved performance on several fronts in June suggests the presumptive GOP nominee is slowly starting to make inroads with a crucial GOP voting bloc.

The FaceTime chart below illustrates one of the challenges McCain faces. The FaceTime metric quantifies the total amount of time voters spend online with candidates across their official website as well as their related sites on places such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Meetup.com. Even after McCain sewed up the nomination in March, candidates no longer in the race continue to grab the attention of voters. Social conservatives Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, for example, combined to capture 14% of GOP FaceTime in June, and they haven’t been candidates for months (though their names, particularly Romney’s, continue to be mentioned as leading running mate options).

John McCain’s overtures to the “right” over the past few weeks, as well as speculation that he could choose a conservative for the ticket, is helping him attract one-time supporters of his former rivals to his camp. The chart below compares the percentage of “active” supporters of Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney (defined as those who made three or more website visits during the final two months of their respective candidacies) who visited John McCain’s website during the past couple of months. After struggling in April and May, McCain fared much better last month among these voters, attracting roughly 10% from each camp.

In the end, the race is likely to come down largely to money. The candidates’ official tallies will make the headlines, and given Obama’s base of support and McCain’s pledge to accept public financing (Obama reversed his earlier pledge to do the same), McCain is unlikely to ever approach Obama’s fundraising prowess. But there is more than one way to fund a campaign and the GOP has proven in times past and so far in this contest that it can counter, if not surpass, the Democratic party’s populist appeal by tapping well-healed donors to contribute at the state and national party levels.

Heading into the late summer, if the “right” is finally awakening from their post-primary slumber, we could have a contest after all.

Spend a few minutes on YouTube, and it’s easy to find the videos most popular among users of the site. While looking at what viewers watched is indeed interesting, looking back a step to see what visitors to the site actually wanted to watch (evidenced by what they searched for), provides an unfiltered peek into users intentions for visiting the site.

The list below shows the top 40 terms visitors to YouTube searched for on the video sharing website in June. Although YouTube’s Community Guidelines state that the site is “not for pornography or sexually explicit content,” apparently a large percentage of YouTube’s audience has yet to get the message, or remain undaunted in their quest to find such material on the site.

Also interesting: music videos command the majority of the top searches. 28 of the top 40 terms searched on YouTube in June related to either a musician (if you can call some that) or a song title. While the record labels have created popular channels on YouTube, pirated videos continue to command a significant amount of total views. R&B artist Rihanna’s popular “Take a Bow” video, for example, has been viewed over 15 million times on the Universal Music Group channel. That accounts for just 40% of total views of the video on YouTube.

Click here to see the complete list of top 40 YouTube search terms in June, and while you’re there, be sure to check out other interesting data Compete has made available on our “Data Hub.”

Barack Obama heads into the general election with several key advantages over John McCain, not the least of which is his campaign’s deep pockets and proven ability to raise millions at the drop of an email.

Last week Obama reversed his position on public campaign financing, opting instead to go it alone. Yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss this and other issues surrounding the Obama campaign on the Fox Business Channel’s Money for Breakfast program. Here is the video of the segment:

For the past year I’ve offered analysis on this and other questions relating to the ongoing presidential election. I recently had the opportunity to speak on the topic at Compete’s Client Forum. I was privileged to have been joined on the stage by Evan Tracey, COO of TNS Media/CMAG. Those that follow the election have likely seen Evan on the major news networks providing insight into how the campaigns are spending their advertising dollars.

I started things off by presenting data to highlight how the Internet landscape has been transformed in the four years that have elapsed since we were discussing Swift Boat Veterans and President Bush’s National Guard service. At this time four years ago, the words facebook, twitter, youtube and flickr had yet to enter our lexicon. These sites, as well as their rivals and imitators, have seen incredible growth in a short amount of time.

As voters have gravitated to these sites, the candidates have rushed to embrace the platforms as tools to more effectively engage and organize their supporters as well as solicit campaign contributions. All of the major candidates made at least a cursory attempt to have a presence on these social networking and video sites this election; however, the Democrats have far exceeded their cross-aisle rivals (Ron Paul’s efforts being a noted exception) in leveraging the power of these tools to their advantage.

Compete’s FaceTime metric looks across candidates’ official websites, social networking and video sites to assess the degree to which the candidates have used these new channels to earn time with voters. The data suggests that Barack Obama’s online advantage was evident a year before the first votes were ever cast, giving him the financial muscle and breadth of support to compete against Hillary Clinton’s presumed inevitability.

In contrast, the race among Republicans was much more fluid, with John McCain wining despite an apparent lack of a cohesive online strategy. McCain’s nomination seems in large part due to social conservative infighting, and specifically the right’s failure to coalesce around a single candidate.

All this online time with voters indeed matters, not only at the polls, but particularly at the coffer: Roughly 80% of the $131 million Barack Obama raised during the first quarter was raised online, compared to less than a quarter of McCain’s modest $38 million in total contributions.

While huge amounts of money are being raised online, Even Tracey detailed the fact the very little is being funneled back to the web in the form of advertising. In the world of political advertising, TV still reigns supreme.

Since the start of the current race for the White House in February 2007, $238 million of television advertisements related to the presidential race have aired. Well-funded Democratic candidates and Democratic-leading special interest groups have outspent their GOP rivals by a more than 2 to 1 margin. During this time, only $4 million has been spent online, mostly by the candidates to solicit campaign contributions and drive grass-roots efforts.

For all the attention the web has received over the past decade, campaigns continue to view TV as a more efficient means of informing and influencing voters, particularly those that are undecided about who to support. CMAG forecasts $3 billion will be spent on campaign advertising this election year across the various presidential, state and federal races both by candidates themselves, their respective parties, as well as well-funded special interest groups.

Evan also noted an interesting relationship between the timing of political advertising and the number of undecided voters these ads reach. As the majority of advertising occurs 60 days before an election, the marginal cost of influencing voters climbs dramatically as these ads chase a dwindling number of undecided voters.

While the power of the web from an organizational and fundraising perspective has been made abundantly clear this election, judging by where the candidates are placing their advertising bets, campaigns remain skeptical of the web as a medium for finding, let alone influencing prized undecided voters.

To political junkies and novices alike, I’ll pose these questions, and welcome your responses:

• How can the GOP compete with the Democrat’s online muscle?
• Are online political advertisements effective?
• Will facebook and MySpace supporters turn out to vote in November?