In case you missed it, comScore recently released a report entitled The Digital Politico: 5 Ways Digital Media is Shaping the 2012 Presidential Election. The report analyzes key digital campaign elements that have impacted the primaries, with an eye to how these will affect the general election.

Among the key themes discussed in the report is social media. Social media’s ubiquity and rise in popularity in recent years have largely contributed to shaping a more social environment online – not just among friends, but also between brands and consumers as well as candidates and voters. Today, social media has become an integral part of the political media landscape, growing as a primary channel for campaigns to reach out to their constituents, provide open lines of communication, and weigh in on the issues of the day (when they can’t get on TV, of course).

Through social media, a wider group of voters have found a way of more actively engaging in political discussion, debates, and issue advocacy. Whereas people may once have gathered in small groups to share their political opinions, they are now able to do the same with a broader number of people online by simply writing a post and clicking a link to share these with friends. As a result, in addition to and in some cases in place of the political conversations that typically take place in small groups around office watercoolers, similar conversations now take place on people’s Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds, giving birth to the “digital watercooler.” The true power of the “digital watercooler,” however, is the ability to amplify these debates – which used to occur between a few people – to dozens or even hundreds of people in one’s social networks.

Beyond merely engaging a core base of supporters, however, campaigns have also found value in social media as a means for reaching a broader prospective audience. Although social media continues to evolve as an advertising channel, a comScore analysis of both the Republican and Democratic social strategies to date demonstrates how and why it needs to be considered along with each of the other more established media channels. Like other mass media, social media has the ability to reach an audience and deliver an impression with the ability to persuade a voter’s opinion and compel them to act. What has not traditionally been understood is the scale at which social media can reach prospective audiences and how it may actually influence the behavior of those reached. The following data reveal how campaigns can capitalize on ‘earned’ media impressions through Facebook that can be similar in scale – and in some cases much larger – than the number of impressions delivered by their paid display ad campaigns. Earned impressions are defined as advertising messages people pass on to their friends and associates via social networks, functioning as bonus advertising providing additional exposures at no added cost.

While the Obama campaign delivered nearly 800 million paid display ads in January – a significant number on its own – it leveraged Obama’s 25 million Facebook fans to deliver nearly 66 million additional earned impressions virally. On the Republican side, Ron Paul more than doubled his paid media presence with earned impressions, while Romney received half as many impressions and Santorum nearly matched his paid total. In other words, the Obama campaign generated more free advertising by fans spreading ad messages virally than the sum total of all the paid advertising of all the Republican candidates.

It is fair to say that on sheer volume of exposure, the Obama campaign is far outpacing Republicans in leveraging social media. On the other hand, if we look at the virality ratio (ratio of paid to earned impressions) Ron Paul clearly won that race by getting more than twice as many free exposures than the number he paid for. If one were to apply the average online display ad CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $3, then the 30 million earned impressions received by the Ron Paul campaign were worth nearly $100,000 in advertising in one month. Because messages endorsed by friends can in some cases be more likely to persuade the thoughts and feelings of those exposed, the value of these viral impressions may be far greater than the initial estimate. The digital lesson there is that a compelling ad will indeed travel, amplifying the candidate’s message and value of the online dollars spent. It is well worth the time and effort for campaigns to understand the degree to which the message resonates with fans before running the campaign.

An analysis of the frequency of exposures across candidates is also insightful. On average, each paid exposure to a fan results in 0.68 of an exposure to a friend of that fan. This further demonstrates the unique capabilities of social media in engaging a broader mix of users. Gingrich ads stood out as an exception to the general pattern in that they managed to expose friends of fans more often than his actual fans. Even though Gingrich had a much smaller base of fans, this suggests those fans were passing those messages onto their friends at an unusually high rate of frequency.

This illustration highlights how social media effectively serves as a channel for campaigns to generate a word-of-mouth effect among supporters, broadening the reach of their campaign messages at a fraction of what it would normally cost to do so on other platforms.

Another important component of a campaign’s social media presence is to understand which audiences they are reaching. One might assume that those who visit the campaign’s website or who become fans of a given candidate are likely to be engaged constituents and supporters. While that may certainly be the case, our data also suggest that these two groups may be very different audiences in reality. For example, 57 percent of visitors to BarackObama.com are age 45 and older, compared to just 22 percent of his Facebook fans. Overall, his social audience skews younger than the audience he reaches via his website. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, shows the opposite pattern. Although he has not yet amassed an audience that is anywhere near President Obama’s, the audience he is reaching through social means actually skews older than the audience that visits his website.

Such marked differences suggest that campaign operations must understand who their audience is for each media and design their strategies accordingly. As we conclude the primary portion of the 2012 election season and Mitt Romney assumes the role of the Republican nominee, we’ll be keeping an eye on both the Obama and Romney campaigns to see how they continue to leverage social media and what effect their social strategies will ultimately have on their campaigns.

In case you missed it, comScore recently released a report on the global state of social networking, entitled It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed. In the report, we examined the current state of social networking among online users around the world.

Over the past few years, social networks have evolved to become an integral part of the online experience, providing the means for users to facilitate offline connections and build new ones online. In the process, social networks have shaped the way we communicate and have even cultivated new social behaviors. Indisputably, the way we keep in touch with friends, find recommendations, and share ideas with others has changed with the advent of social networking.

Here are three of our key findings, which you can find in the full report available for download or in the accompanying presentation embedded below.

Social Networking is the most popular online activity worldwide
In October 2011, 1.2 billion users around the world visited social networking sites, accounting for 82 percent of the world’s population. Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online around the world is now spent on social networking sites, making Social Networking the most popular content category in engagement worldwide.

Microblogging has emerged as a disruptive new force in social networking
Microblogging, a way of communicating through short-form content, has emerged as a leading social networking platform over the past few years, led by Twitter. In October 2011, Twitter reached 1 in 10 worldwide Internet users, reflecting its emergence as a leading global social network. Other microblogging platforms on the rise are Tumblr and Sina Weibo.

Mobile devices are fueling the social addiction
As mobile devices provide users with the means to connect on-the-go and interact in real-time, they show promise in taking social networking even further. Nearly one third of the U.S. mobile population age 13 and older accessed social networking sites at least once in October 2011. Across five leading markets in Europe, nearly a quarter of the mobile population reported doing so as well. With smartphones driving even more frequent social networking use through apps and the emergence of tablets, we expect mobile social networking to be the wave of the future.

This post was co-authored with Vinayak Nair and Marty Henningsgard.

When an early snowstorm hit the Northeast on October 29, it left much of the hardest-hit areas in the region crippled without electricity, landline phone service, or fixed-line (i.e. classic web) Internet service as cable lines were brought down by the unseasonably heavy weather. To date, Connecticut residents – among the most affected by the storm – are continuing to endure the outages as restoration efforts go slowly.

With the Internet being a key source of information in emergency situations – as seen in our previous posts on the recent earthquakes that hit the East Coast and Japan – we wondered what impact the loss of power and Internet service had on Connecticut residents. Without the ready means to access the Internet at home, there would evidently be a noticeable change in digital media consumption for the region. To better quantify and understand the implications of the snowstorm on Internet use, comScore analyzed Internet traffic based on browser-based page views in the Connecticut local market in the days leading up to the storm and immediately following it.

Overall Internet Traffic Falls During the Snowstorm
In the chart below, we noted that following October 28, the level of overall (both classic web and mobile) Internet traffic, measured by page views, decreased by 37 percent going into October 30. What is most interesting in this chart, however, is a significant spike of 34 percent in mobile and computer Internet traffic seen on October 27 – two days before the storm itself. A closer look into what caused the spike in traffic revealed that the number of views for pages whose URLs included the key word “weather” increased by 81 percent from the day before (October 26), indicating that people were checking the forecast for the weekend at an unusually high rate.

Reinforcing these findings are data from comScore AdXpose’s aggregate online ad impression volume for the Hartford – New Haven region during the snowstorm. The ad impression data reveal an even steeper decline, with a 41-percent decrease in ad impressions viewed online from the October 28 to October 30.

Despite an Overall Decline in Internet Traffic, Mobile Internet Use Remained Stable
On closer examination, we can see that the overall decline in traffic was caused, unsurprisingly, by a decline in classic web use during the snowstorm. A comparison of classic Internet traffic in the region for the weekend of the snowstorm (October 28-30) reveals a staggering 41 percent decline relative to classic Internet use from the previous weekend (October 21-23).

In contrast, mobile Internet use remained at a relatively stable level, even when compared to the previous weekend. When people across the region lost the ability to access information on their computers, they likely relied on their mobile phones for information.

These data illustrate, once again, how mobile devices are become increasingly indispensable to people in times of emergencies, not just as a communication channel, but also as an alternative method of gathering information via the Internet when fixed line computers are unavailable. Yet, it is important to note that even mobile phones have their technological limitations as devices that rely on power sources to recharge and the availability of wireless signals. In areas where mobile carrier networks were disrupted in Connecticut due to the storm, mobile phones may not have been that much more helpful.

Recently, comScore released data that showed online traffic in India experiencing a surge in the first few weeks of the 2011 Cricket World Cup. In the last few weeks of the World Cup, visitation to top cricket sites continued to see a sustained peak in traffic as the final matches brought the tournament to a close. In India, the March 30 semifinals match featuring India vs. Pakistan drew the largest online audience for an individual day, with nearly 3 million visitors coming to Yahoo! Cricket alone.

Traffic in the Knockout Rounds Sustains Increase in Volume
Coming off the traffic spike brought about by the March 12 match featuring India vs. South Africa, cricket sites in India saw a sustained rate of visitation throughout the knockout tournament rounds, which began on the week of March 20.

Leading site ESPNCricInfo.com continued to attract the highest number of weekly visitors from India during these rounds, with 6.3 million visiting the site during the week of semifinals (week ending March 20). In the final week (week ending April 3), ESPNCricInfo.com reached 6.6 million visitors, up 8 percent versus 5 weeks prior.

Other top cricket sites experienced even more dramatic increases. Yahoo! Cricket’s weekly visitation saw a 33-percent jump from 5 weeks prior, while CricBuzz.com gained 36 percent. ESPNStar.com saw a sizeable 75-percent increase to 4.3 million visitors, while CricTime.com saw the most dramatic percentage increase at 86 percent.

Highly-Anticipated Matches Show Highest Visitation in the Final Rounds
An analysis of daily traffic coming from India during the knockout rounds shows the highest volume of visitors occurring on the days of highly-anticipated matches involving India. During the quarterfinal rounds, the March 24 Australia vs. India match drew 1.8 million visitors to ESPNCricInfo.com, 1.7 million visitors to Yahoo! Cricket, and 1.3 million visitors to ESPNStar.com.

The final match between India and Sri Lanka on April 2 also drew significant visitation for these sites, although the greatest volume of daily traffic occurred during the March 30 India vs. Pakistan semifinal match. With 1.8 million visitors, Yahoo! Cricket actually surpassed ESPNCricInfo.com’s audience of 1.7 million visitors that day. ESPNStar.com, CricTime.com, and CricBuzz.com also drew their highest daily visitor totals on this day.

The surge in Internet traffic to cricket sites during the Cricket World Cup reflects not just how wildly popular the sport continues to be among participating countries, but also how digital technology supplements the traditionally TV-dominated coverage of this and other major sporting events. With the continued surge in Internet adoption in India, along with the proliferation of mobile devices, the Indian population has more options than ever to stay connected and current to the important events of the day.

When a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan off the Tohoku coast on March 11, it triggered tsunami waves of massive proportions and caused devastation to much of the surrounding region, crippling telecommunication infrastructures, immobilizing landlines and Internet access for millions. In the wake of the disaster, mobile phone usage soared as people all over Japan used wireless networks to communicate and seek out information on the safety of others.

Japan has long been one of the world’s most connected populations, with 100.9 million mobile subscribers in December 2010 and more than 75 percent of these subscribers connecting to mobile media. When compared to users in the US and EU5 countries, Japanese users show a higher propensity to access information via apps and mobile browsers. In a society where mobile use has become an integral part of one’s lifestyle, it does not come as a surprise to find mobile use becoming a crucial lifeline in a time of crisis.

To understand the nature of mobile web usage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, comScore compared Japan’s fixed Internet and mobile Internet traffic patterns on an hourly basis in the days before and after the quake hit.

In the two days before the quake hit Japan, total Internet traffic in the country followed a predictable weekday pattern, with traffic peaking around noontime and dipping thereafter. On March 11, Friday traffic followed a similar pattern during the first part of the day, but then showed a significant spike in activity following the quake, reflecting a large demand for information following the disaster. In the two subsequent days over the weekend, there is no noontime spike, but Internet traffic is sustained and even surpasses weekday traffic in the evening hours – a pattern that is very atypical of weekend Internet usage.

A look at mobile Internet traffic alone shows even more interesting results, as the increase in weekend traffic is more pronounced coming from mobile phone usage. Here, the effective increase in Internet consumption is more apparent in the days following the quake, with mobile Internet use doubling at peak usage times from the days before the quake. In the days following March 11, mobile Internet use sustains its increased volume throughout the day - not just in the evenings - and reaches its peak late at night on March 13.

PC and Mobile Internet Usage Soars in Comparison to Average
Supporting these findings, the traffic patterns for March 11-13 show an unusual increase when compared to baseline averages for each of those days of the week. To establish a baseline average for Japan Internet traffic on a typical Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we averaged the amount of traffic observed on each of those days for the four weeks prior to the earthquake. A look at computer-based Internet traffic for those days following the earthquake compared to the baseline shows significant lifts in traffic, peaking with a 48-percent lift vs. average on Saturday, March 12.

Mobile Internet traffic patterns exhibited even more pronounced increases. March 11 showed a 42-percent lift vs. a typical Friday, while March 12 posted a 69-percent lift vs. a typical Saturday. The relatively higher lift in mobile Internet traffic indicates an even greater reliance on mobile devices in the wake of the event, perhaps reflecting the number of people displaced by the crisis or the need to stay abreast of recent events during times in which they would not otherwise be turning to their mobile devices.

Anecdotal information out of Japan support these illustrations of heavier mobile use following the quake, with reports of mobile phone chargers being sold out en masse throughout affected areas on the day of the quake (as stranded commuters had to rely on mobile phones for communication). With landline connectivity unavailable in some areas, there were reports of others relying on VOIP services such as Skype to connect with others to find more information on damage from the earthquake, traffic reports, and other affected areas.

Heat Map Shows Hourly Spikes in Activity in Hours Following Quake
A final illustration shows hourly mobile phone use in Japan in the days before and after the quake. While the pattern of mobile use across the country doesn’t seem to change drastically from a glance, there is a relative increase in the intensity of mobile use in the evening hours in the days following the quake, consistent with what the rest of our data is telling us.

All these data offer a compelling story of how people leverage technology for news, information and communication in the wake of a crisis. But while mobile phones undoubtedly facilitated essential communication and knowledge-sharing during this disaster, it’s important to consider the limitations of this technology, given its dependence on having wireless infrastructure in place.

It will be interesting to see if mobile continues to play a similar role in disaster relief efforts in the future and how the technology could evolve to better serve this need. Similar to how social networks have become an integral part of mobilization in the recent and continuing revolutions in the Middle East, an important question to ponder is whether mobile could eventually become the primary medium for communication in a crisis?