T minus two hundred and eighty-four days till election day is here, and while talks of tax breaks, primaries, and Fed interest rate cuts still dominate the media headlines, there’s no time like the present for candidates and their camps to step up their online campaigns.

Online advertising is critical to political campaigns. Exposure through banner ads, blogs, and keyword searches to name a few don’t make or break an election, but are effective ways of reaching out to current and prospective supporters, and sustaining a steady campaign buzz. Political advertisements reach widespread audiences throughout the world who receive controlled campaign messages via savvy online strategists. It’s political branding at its best (or worst) and feeds an endless stream of content to fair-weather and fully committed viewers alike.

Political reports spread like wildfire the very moment candidates utter something even slightly offbeat. Just think what would’ve happened to Lyndon B. Johnson’s controversial ‘Daisy’ advertisement (the one that begins by showing a young girl counting flower petals in a meadow with the last scene ending in nuclear explosion) if his campaign team had access to YouTube, RSS feeds, blogospheres, and more?

While the internet is inundated with political content and countless pages of propaganda, how does a candidate effectively stand out from the others? Given the fact that the internet invites anyone and everyone to pick apart online political advertisements frame by frame, word by word, and pixel by pixel, designers have a bevy of challenges. As with any ad, all components must point to the overriding objective of getting the candidate elected.

Unlike more traditional forms of advertising however, online ads open the door for tremendous viral response - both good and bad. The online audience is basically a candidate’s test audience.

The internet has become the preeminent political advertising front. Before the Iowa caucus began, ValueClick Media reserved 300 million online advertising impressions to last candidates till the February 5th primary. On the opposite end, political analysis firms such as the Rimm-Kaufman Group found candidates underutilize ppc strategies. The firm claims a more focused ppc campaign would connect candidate messages, in the form of ads, to all name searches.

Political strategy is alive and kicking on the internet. It’s no accident a Google search of the name ‘Hillary’ returned an entire page of positive, campagin controlled, Hillary Clinton sites and ads. No other medium offers even close to the same amount of candidate information as the internet.

The point of using a significant portion of business dollars is to earn a return wherever it’s invested.  Sometimes this is tangible, meaning advertising and marketing campaigns can be tracked by the penny.  Other times, the much sought after ROI is attained via exposure and brand penetration.  While small businesses may spend more time tracking ads dollar for dollar, what about the big corporations with huge spending budgets?

We can assume companies that advertise on Super Bowl Sunday aren’t your average start-up. While employees, consultants, and stat trackers alike will be glued to their computer screens come Feb. 3rd, do companies pay this close of attention year round?

Are big companies tracking their ROI dime for dime, or only when a whopper of an ad hits the big time - or goes bust like the Golden Globes?  The answer appears to be yes.

Web 2.0 quickly took online ads from slightly sticky to dynamic sponges that absorb every last drop of attainable user information.  However, with big companies, the people tracking the effectiveness of these ads usually aren’t employed in-house.  Companies like Allstate, American Express, and IBM use advertising giant, Ogilvy, to create, run, and well as analyze every last bit of web induced data available.

According to Paul Slogan’s article in Business 2.0, “Ogilvy’s in-house optimizer runs 5,000 to 10,000 calculations each time it evaluates the performance of an ad campaign.  The optimizer collects data on scores or even thousands of ads and analyzes which ones are working, and why, on the fly.”(excerpted from an article previously posted on www.cnnmoney.com).

As our media devices grow and change (they may all be featured at MacWorld this week) it will become even more difficult to track the successess and failures of each individual campaign.  Software will catch up however, and soon data from every portal will be seamlessly synced and ready to, well, determine if it made any money or not.