Newspapers were once, and still are, a preferred medium for political campaign advertising. But now Google is tapping those ad dollars, as all frontrunners have signed up to use Google's Adwords and AdSense targeted advertising programs.

Google opened a dedicated political ad sales office, with 25 staffers, in Washington DC. The candidates typically buy ads to appear next to relevant search results.

"You can geotarget as finely as a zip code, so almost to within a mile or so radius of where the voter is. If you want to reach a voter in New Hampshire it means you're not wasting media spend on users in Vermont who can't vote. Refine it even more if you just want to reach women by running on sites like MarthaStewart.com," said Peter Greenberger, head of elections and issue advocacy at Google's Washington office.

"If you're buying television to reach New Hampshire, you have to buy Boston TV. But 75% of their viewers are in Massachusetts so that's 75% of every dollar wasted. That's not the case on the internet."

Political ad spend for 2008 is expected to reach around $65million. About 2.4% will be online. Total spend during the campaign is expected to top $1 billion.

Newspapers better ramp up their offers for local online advertising.

Source: Guardian