’08 race: the first (screen) shots

Well, John Edwards’ ads, launched in late December, have been followed by ads by Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and, yesterday, Barack Obama. Screenshots below.

To date, the Edwards’ ads make the most effective use of Blogads, reaching the most blogs, grabbing the highest placements, running multiple versions, including a video clip image in one version and, in all versions, multiple links to resources on Edwards website.

Yes, other candidates are on their way.

In MediaPost, Shankar Gupta does an excellent wrap-up of the first two candidates:

“Matt Gross, head of online communications for the Edwards campaign, said the candidate intends to use the Web to deliver his message to voters unfiltered. ‘We saw blog ads as an effective way to bring people in the blogosphere directly to the campaign Web site, where they could hear from Edwards directly.'” …

[Romney’s spokesman, Kevin] Madden, said that Romney hopes the blog ads will reach the most influential voters. “The effort is driven by our recognition of a very unique and motivated audience among New Media devotees,” he said. “Our blog ads help reach this audience and drive traffic to our mittromney.com website and provide more information about Mitt Romney, his campaign, his ideas and how they can then in turn join our effort.”

Here are screenshots…