Yesterday, it was officially confirmed that Barack Obama was advertising on the Xbox 360 game Burnout Paradise; a pixelated billboard ad says “Early Voting Has Begun, VoteForChange.com.” This is a doubly interesting development to me: I enjoy politics, and I enjoy video games. The idea that Obama would delegate some of his ad spend toward video games speaks both to the amount of money his campaign has to spend — he can literally just toss it about in virtual worlds — and to the foresight of his marketing team. It’s interesting stuff.

But of course that’s not a sports story, or at least not till last night, when TheHill.com reported that Obama was also running the same billboard ads in online games of Madden ‘09. (HT: MDS) Only gamers in 10 swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin) will see the ads.

Regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, this is yet another bit of evidence that Obama’s campaign is as tech-savvy as any the modern era has yet seen. It’s incredibly impressive.

Now, if only Fifa ‘09 would have shipped yesterday like it was supposed to, I could have spent all night, um, doing research for this post. Mmm. Research.