As you may have heard a couple weeks back, the Obama campaign has been running advertisements on nine Xbox 360 games . Did they think it would be an innovative way to reach normally disaffected young voters? Yeah, but more importantly it was dirt ass cheap.

According to Gamespot, running in-game advertisements in ten battleground states for a month cost the Obama campaign only $44,500. While it seems like a lot of money, it's a pretty small amount for a presidential campaign - especially when your campaign can rake in $150 million in a month. For basis of comparison, they had to shell out $1 million a piece to air Obama's thirty-minute special on CBS, Fox, and NBC last night.

Obama was the first Presidential candidate to advertise in a video game. The practice is probably viewed with some skepticism by political campaigns, many of which have only recently discovered the Internet. It's unclear how effective it actually is in convincing the audience, but isn't that an issue for all advertising? In-game advertising's low price tag isn't a measure of how effective it actually is but rather a measure of how effective people think it is. While people might like their video game experiences to be apolitical, I suspect we'll see more candidates buying virtual bilboards in the future. Especially if it's such a damned bargain.