Patrick Beeson

The innovation factory at Google has released their first foray into the 2008 American presidential race with the aptly named Election 2008 gadget, which can be added to your iGoogle page.

The gadget disrupts traditional media sites coverage of the election because it gives users yet another reason not to visit the home page of said media company.

Users of the gadget can set which of the Democrat or Republican candidates they want to follow, and then tab through aggregated news coverage, blog entries, YouTube videos and campaign maps.

I suspect this is just the beginning to Google's political news effort.

Folks tracking Google may recall their use of a customizable landing page for the 2007 Australian Federal election that offered many of the same features as does the Election gadget. What's to say they won't top this with the election in their home country?

Google does depend on traditional media, bloggers and YouTube for their content (aside from the AP). But there's the rub -- media companies depend on Google for delivering an enormous number of page views (as much as half their total views), but the gadget allows users the option of scanning headlines outside of those companies' home pages.

And home pages are where media companies make a lot of money from advertising.

I believe this is another indication that weighting home pages and section pages for higher CPMs is a bad way to go.

As we enter the heart of the election season, media companies should leverage their story/video detail pages for squeezing out the most dollars.