Barack Obama, The Democratic National Committee and "Car Wash Babes"? They may not seem a likely grouping, but yesterday, ads paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Illinois Senator's presidential campaign showed up on an array of local Clear Channel rock radio station Web sites featuring content some would consider inappropriate for a radio station, much less a presidential campaign.

Video war continues between Obama and McCain, McCain is using Wikipedia, David All is impressed with McCain's online ads, Jame Hamsher has a new PAC to boast about, #dontgo campaign gets a little more support,

Obama won big in this month's North Carolina primary and his online ad strategy in April may have played a role in driving his supporters to the polls. As the primaries chug along, Senator Barack Obama has steamrolled past fellow Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton and likely Republican nominee John McCain in the Web ad department.

The big news in this campaign cycle is that online ads by the campaigns are expected to hit $20 million. Woo hoo. That is a lot of money, isn't it? Well, actually, it is not.

Managing placements of online ads can be a challenge, as the Obama campaign recently learned. With more caucuses and primaries approaching, his campaign accidentally placed an ad for Nevada on a South Carolina TV news website. This seems to be an isolated incident. Fortunately, online ads can be swapped or pulled in ways that print ads cannot. The ad is no longer displayed on the News 14 website.

MediaPost reported last November that online political ad spending hit $40 million according to PQ Media. And then today, The Wall Street Journal pointed to PQ Media in reporting that candidates, political parties and third-party groups will spend $80 million in online ads during the 2008 cycle.

The problem is, PQ Media’s numbers don’t gel with conventional wisdom and competitor data. Interviews with campaign strategists, estimates from TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG (download presentation), data from Nielsen’s AdRelevance (download description), and my personal knowledge as an online political advertising consultant peg online political advertising in 2006 at no more than $5 million...

As more and more candidates declare their intention to run for president in 2008, more and more Americans will turn to search engines like Google and Yahoo! to find their websites.

So, at a minimum, I expected all 17 of the presumed candidates to have purchased keywords. To my chagrin, only six candidates have taken the plunge. And if you take a closer look, it’s the Republicans who are doing a significantly better job of using search to communicate with the electorate...