My first internet job was as a creative director for a company that did websites for political candidates. To say the least, we were pretty far ahead of the curve in 1995 (the candidates would ask us what the World Wide Web was, obviously not getting the memo that Al Gore had invented it). We did some notable sites — the first site I ever built professionally was for the Oliver North Radio Show, some nonprofit work, and a site for Jim Cunneen — but we didn’t know what we were doing, so it ended. But it was fun.

So, in my heart I’ve always had a special place political sites.

And let me tell you, Barack Obama’s web initiatives reflected exactly what they did in the campaign: they stayed on message, they stayed at a high level, and it was classic effective direct marketing. Advertising executives should take note, because when we look about at campaigning on the internet, the year it really arrived was 2008.  

They really knocked it out of the park, and they can attribute a lot of their success to web fundraising.

Following that, impost disects their Obama web initiatives in a very detailed post. Read on…