Renaissance profiler

Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign is working with ethnic-targeted sites to try and avoid a potentially embarrassing advertising situation, reports ClickZ.

The Obama campaign sees value in creating a profile for the candidate on social networking sites frequented by ethnic audiences and other minority or special interest groups.

But they'd prefer not to have inappropriate ads appear on those profile pages. So they're working with publishers and site operators to make sure ads for competing candidates, soft porn and other inappropriate topics don't appear.

Profile pages for Obama have been set up on networks that appeal to blacks, Hispanics, gays, Asians and Christians.

The campaign has then worked to stock those profiles with blog posts and other content that's relevant to that audience. Obama's lead in creating such profiles has prompted the campaigns for other candidates to explore setting up profiles themselves.