Video analytics and distribution company Tube Mogul looked at the past several months of metrics for You Tube videos featuring U.S. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama:

“John McCain’s campaign appears to be shifting resources away from YouTube. Overall, they are launching 39.8% fewer videos than last month, and 29.7% fewer than August. Perhaps not unrelated, McCain also hasn’t taken the lead in daily views for all of October…. And sadly, two of the four the clips mentioning him in the 100 most-viewed videos across sites this past week ending last Friday were of gaffes…. Ominous signs, perhaps.”

The GOP candidate has made some attempts to take advantage of social networking tools, putting a blog on the campaign’s website, and creating profiles on MySpace and Twitter.

However, foregoing “no-brainer” opportunities to broadcast your campaign’s message and to showcase your candidate using the media where voters are turning their attention seems ill-advised. Letting gaffe-ridden videos overshadow a dwindling number of “on message” videos seems downright foolhardy.