The Presidential Domain Name Contest
The U.S. Presidential election this year is going to be a billion dollar spending contest. Tiny portions of the huge budgets are devoted to buying up domain names. These domains are being used to attack and promote. Some are even set for redirection to landing pages to collect campaign contributions.
Attackwatch.com (photo – Barackobama.com)
The Obama campaign’s purchases include Attackwatch.com. It is being used as an outlet to counter attacks and put out facts and talking points.
The Obama for America campaign has also purchased Mittbot.com. The domain sends you to the default parked page on GoDaddy.com
Domains purchased by Romney for President, Inc. are largely related to single issues. According to a study of FEC filings by the USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich, some of Romney campaign’s buys include theapologistinchief.com, agingrockstar2012.com, o-the-amateur.com and fortyfore.com. The first three are parked with GoDaddy.com.
An interesting thing is the Romney campaign’s use of redirection. Type in for fortyfore.com and you get redirected to a landing page on the mittromney.com website. The main purpose of the page seems to be collection of campaign contributions.
Similarly, the new romneyryan.com website launched after Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan was chosen to join the Republican ticket as the VP candidate redirects you to the main mittromney.com home page.
One dud the Romney campaign bought that no sane domain investor will touch with a 10 foot pole is Iwilltransmityourflexibilitytovladimir.com.
The Romney campaign also bought MomswithRomney.com and Mom-Ney.com to support Ann Romney. The candidate’s wife had been attacked for not having worked a day in her life. These two domains are general enough to target an entire demographic.
FEC filings say that the Romney campaign has spent $32,261 on domain name purchases. Some of these domains are now dead investments because they were used for the Republican primary. The Obama campaign has invested $29,627 for domains.
