a powerful source of campaigning for the 2008 Presidential Election. Every major party candidate had their own YouTube channel in order to communicate with the voters, with John McCain posting over 300 videos and Barack Obama posting over 1,800 videos. The music video "Yes We Can" by will.i.am demonstrates user-generated publicity for the 2008 Presidential Campaign. The video depicts many celebrities as well as black and white clips of Barack Obama. This music video inspired many parodies and won an Emmy for Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment. The proliferation of viral videos in the 2008 campaign highlights the fact that people increasingly turn to the internet to receive their news. In a study for the Pew Research Center in 2008, approximately 2% of the participants said that they received their news from non-traditional sources such as MySpace or YouTube. The campaign was widely seen as an example of the growing influence of the internet on United States politics, a point further evidenced by the founding of viral video producers like Brave New Films. During the 2012 United States presidential election, "Obama Style" and "Mitt Romney Style", the parodies of Gangnam Style, both peaked on Election Day and received approximately 30 million views within one month before Election Day. "Mitt Romney Style", which negatively portrays Mitt as an affluent, extravagant, and arrogant businessman, received an order of magnitude views more than "Obama Style". Financial implications The web traffic gained by viral videos allows for advertising revenue. The YouTube website is monetized by selling and showing advertising. According to the New York Times, YouTube uses an algorithm called "reference rank" to evaluate the viral potential of videos posted to the site. Using evidence from as few as 10,000 views, it can assess the probability that the video will go viral. If it deems the video a viable candidate for advertising, it contacts the original poster by e-mail and offers a profit-sharing contract. By this means, such videos as "David After Dentist" have earned more than $100,000 for their owners. One successful YouTube video creator, Andrew Grantham, whose "Ultimate Dog Tease" had been viewed more than 170,000,000 times (as of June 2015), entered an agreement with Paramount Pictures in February 2012 for the development of a feature film. The film was to be written by Alec Berg and David Mandel. Pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Esmée Denters also started their