The White House lauds Obama's appearance on Between Two Ferns as 'overwhelmingly successful'

(Image credit: Funny or Die)

last updated 8 January 2015

Whether you loved or hated President Barack Obama's publicity stunt on Between Two Ferns, one thing is certain: it worked. On CBS This Morning, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said the traffic that funneled from Funny or Die's website to healthcare.gov almost reached one million hits in less than 24 hours.

Jarrett told anchor Gayle King that it wasn't difficult to get Obama to participate in the skit and called it "overwhelmingly successful." She was also pleased with the site's numbers:

"I was checking how many hits were on the site last night when I went to bed. It was 10 million, which I'm sure breaks all kinds of records. But more importantly than that, the traffic on [healthcare.gov] has gone up 40 percent between yesterday and today, and that was the goal."

Jarrett speaks about it starting at the 4:20 mark. --Jordan Valinsky

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Speed Reads Us News

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter