The 2007 Australian Election and Online Marketing

Hitwise Online Competitive Intelligence Data Reveals Kevin Rudd leveraging email and consumer generated media, PM taking advantage of search marketing

16 October 2007 - Melbourne - As the 2007 Australian election kicks off, Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service today announced insights into the online performance of www.kevin07.com and www.pm.gov.au, the respective primary websites of Kevin Rudd and John Howard.

Who is winning the online popularity vote?

As of 14 October 2007, the Kevin 07 website, which is specifically focused on the election, captured 155% more visits compared to John Howard's website, based on traffic to Australian websites. However this has not always been the case, as depicted in the chart below. Over the past three months, the top spot has interchanged seven times. 

According to Tessa Court of Hitwise, "while online visits do not necessarily indicate actual votes, they are an excellent indicator of interest in specific policies, performance on television talk shows and overall campaign momentum."

How does each candidate's website attract visitors?

Interestingly, while both candidates are capturing relatively equal percentages of traffic from their political party and news and media websites, the Kevin 07 campaign has been successful in leveraging email campaigns and consumer generated media outlets such as Facebook and YouTube, while the Prime Minister's main website, which is substantially less focused on the election, dominates with search marketing. As of the week ending 13 October 2007, each website received traffic from the following sources:

Who is visiting each candidate’s website?

While the election will be determined by voters' preferences in each seat, the following behavioural and attitudinal demographic analysis shows which MOSAIC^TM lifestyle segments frequent the Kevin 07 website and how this differs from the Prime Minister’s website. With segments listed in order of affluence - "Leading Lifestyles" segment being the most affluent, www.kevin07.com attracts a higher percentage of visits from lower income Internet users than does the Prime Minister's website. In addition, Kevin 07 attracts a higher percentage of visits from thought leader segments "Fashionably Wired" and "Cultural and Informed". In contrast, www.pm.gov.au has a stronger hold on the "Family Room", "Domestic Appliance" and "Shades of Grey" segments which are comprised of upper and middle income families and older Australians.

As Tessa Court comments, "from this data, it is evident that Kevin Rudd is resonating with the intellectual influencers and lower income families. As the election progresses, it will be interesting to see if labor's election policies gain more traction amongst middle Australia as evidenced by the psychographic composition of visitors to each candidate's website."

MOSAIC^TM profile of visitors to www.kevin07.com and swing comparison against www.pm.gov.au as of week ending 13 October 2007.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.