Barack Obama Uses Video To Win Primaries In Hawaii

For the record, all the candidates are using video. They'd be missing out on a huge demographic of their audience if they weren't.

How they're using video is more important.

Hillary Clinton
http://hillaryclinton.com/video/
A very long list of videos, with thumbnails. You have to click on the thumbnails to watch the videos. On the video page, you're shown the list of videos again, down the right hand side of the page. Each video also comes with it's own YouTube embed code.

Barack Obama
http://barackobama.com/tv/
Obama skips the long list, and takes you right into the video player, with all available videos down the left hand side. While you can embed the videos as well, the service provided from BrightCove.com doesn't make it as obvious how to do so.

Mike Huckabee
http://www.mikehuckabee.com/?FuseAction=Newsroom.Home
Couple of problems with Huckabee's videos:
1. Hard to find - they're under "newsroom"?
2. Thumbnails aren't linked - have to click on the video title to get to it.
3. Straight YouTube Channel.

Huckabee effectively drives traffic AWAY from his site to watch the videos. This is a poor move on Huckabee's webmasters part.

John McCain
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/
McCain doesn't put the videos up front either. He's got them hidden away under News & Media, then MultiMedia.

He does have a YouTube and Veoh channel, and they're embedded in his site, as they should be.

Why is video placement so important?

Understand that we are not endorsing any particular candidate here. This is simply our position on video placement.

Out of the 4 major candidates, Barack Obama's team seems to "get it".

1. The Video's Aren't Hidden
2. The Video Section is called TV
3. The Video's are easy to view
4. Traffic Stays on his site.

So, take a page from Barack's campaign on how to use video on your own website.