The Web on the Candidates -- It's a mid-August Friday edition

• A couple of days ago we linked to Matthew Musk's comparison of the Democratic fundraising powerhouse ActBlue to the GOP's lackluster ABC PAC. William Beutler, the Blog P.I., calls the post "arguably unhelpful and inarguably un-insightful." Beutler's beef is that Musk is essentially comparing apples to oranges. ABC PAC has "never had the kind of support [from the GOP] such that it should actually be spoken of in the same sentence" as ActBlue. More egregious, Beutler writes, is that Musk was apparently unaware of two new efforts trying to fill the void, Big Red Tent and Slatecard.
• The Washington Times's Eric Pfeiffer writes about Robert Bluey's Conservative Bloggers Briefings, weekly meetings that, says Bluey, "started out as strategy sessions for conservatives to talk about policy. They've quickly evolved into a destination for members of Congress, authors and others in the movement to share their ideas with an active audience of bloggers." Over at TechRepublican, David All adds that the briefings give a chance for guests like Robert Novak and John Boehner to find out that "bloggers are real people who care about the issues conservatives care about--and they're willing to listen."

The Candidates on the Web

• Although most of the candidates have used Google Adwords to advertise against their opponents' names, only John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama are using keywords related to news and issues, reports Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland. This effective strategy -- Mitt Romney's site showed up in the top paid results last Saturday when users searched for "Iowa straw poll results" -- can also be "unusually cost-effective," says Richard Ball, who discovered the candidates' failure to use it. "How much would a direct-mail advertising campaign have cost to acquire 1,820 visitors to their site? How much would a radio or TV or print-ad campaign have cost to generate that much interest?" asks Ball.

In Case You Missed It...

Responding to Todd Zeigler's critique of using YouTube views as a metric, Micah Sifry agrees that, given candidates' use of other video sites, it's an imperfect way of tracking enthusiasm for online video. Maybe tracking subscribers should be thrown into the mix?

Colin Delany isn't surprised or worried that the "Gays for Giuliani" video is backed by Democratic activists. "Welcome to a new world of citizen involvement in politics!," he writes.

Colin also received an email from the DNC asking him not to give money, but to send a thank-you note.