The 2007 Australian Federal Election - Reaching Voters via Online Marketing

27 November 2007 - Melbourne As a new era of Australian Government begins, Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service today revealed how Kevin Rudd and John Howard fared online during the 2007 Federal Election in terms of searches and popularity of their respective primary websites www.kevin07.com and www.pm.gov.au.

Kevin07 wins the online popularity vote

Until mid-October, the leadership in terms of market share of visits to www.kevin07.com and www.pm.gov.au has interchanged several times, based on traffic to Australian websites. However, as the election campaign reached the home stretch, the Kevin07 website, which is specifically focused on the election, led in the popularity stakes with a greater market share of traffic than John Howard's website between 14 October and 24 November 2007. In fact on the day of the election, 24 November 2007, www.kevin07.com captured 171% more visits than www.pm.gov.au, based on traffic to Australian websites.

While both websites captured comparable traffic from their respective political websites, Kevin07 was the clear leader when it came to leveraging: news and media websites; email campaigns; and social networking and consumer generated media. John Howard took advantage of search marketing, resulting in traffic to www.pm.gov.au being predominantly driven by search engines. For October 2007, each website received traffic from the following sources:

When it came to search terms, increased online interest in both candidates was evident during the week of the election, with searches for "kevin rudd" and "john howard" growing 268% and 219% respectively for the week ending 24 November 2007. The more popular search term was "kevin rudd", which captured 46% more search traffic than the term "john howard"; for that week.

The online performance indicates that Kevin Rudd was the more popular candidate online, just as the election results confirmed that he was the more popular candidate at the polls. So is there a correlation between the two? According to Tessa Court of Hitwise, "While the level of online visits does not necessarily equate to actual votes, it does indicate however the level of interest in a candidate (from their specific policies to New York Night Clubs), the success of their media campaign, and their ability to reach their audience effectively through new and relevant mediums such as Facebook and email."

As the Liberal Party looks to elect their new leader, Hitwise Search Intelligence™ data indicates that "malcolm turnbull" and "tony abbott" are neck-to-neck as popular contenders, ahead of "brendan nelson" for the week ending 24 November 2007. While this position is obviously nominated by the party, this data does give an indication of constituent preference.

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 Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.