Hillary Clinton’s defeat has been widely attributed to failure of her online strategy, which Barack Obama and John McCain exploited so heavily to their own advantage.

One political analyst commented that Clinton lacked qualities of flexibility and authenticity in propelling a successful digital campaign. A new media analyst described both Clintons as silent screen stars who failed to make transition to talkies.

Google’s political advertising guru attributed Obama and McCains success to their savvy exploitation of search advertising, which Clinton did not pursue consistently throughout her campaign.

He emphasizes that every presidential campaign of 2008 made use of Google’s AdWords to reach their supporters. Obama and McCain started using AdWords much early in their campaign and continued with it till the end to garner enormous support from the public. Clintons, who started late, discontinued using it in the last six months of 2007.

Obama has not just stopped here. Realising the immense advantage of online campaign, he has decided to broaden his online strategy. He is expected to establish an online “war room” with the help of cyber strategists. The team will report and react to rumours or any malicious propaganda against Obama on blogs or e-mails.