• by Erik Sass , June 5, 2006

In the closing months of the 2004 presidential election, an animated online parody of the two candidates called "This Land is Your Land" swept the Internet virally, forwarded from e-mail account to e-mail account by amused office workers and soccer moms. The short musical animation became so popular it eventually overwhelmed JibJab.com, its maker: the clip was viewed millions of times, and the site racked up over $100,000 in Internet bills.

But now, video-sharing sites like YouTube have made it possible to post and share videos without the exorbitant cost. And clips posted to date already indicate that politically oriented video ads are likely to balloon online as political camps gear up for this November's mid-term elections--the first big-name political contests since YouTube launched last year.

Last week, two liberal groups with a history of cooperation--MoveOn.org and Americans United for Change--may have become the first political action committees to join the fray, with a user called "AmericansUnited" re-posting a series of TV ads that MoveOn.org is broadcasting in key 2006 congressional battleground districts in Ohio, Connecticut, Virginia, and Indiana.

The $1.3 million MoveOn campaign, "Caught Red-Handed," attacks GOP politicians for their alleged links to the oil industry, showing the subjects in black-and-white photographs except for hands that are colored vivid red. The phrase "caught red-handed," which appears in the ads, plays neatly into the search term hierarchy of YouTube, where words like "caught" and "owned" are perennial favorites (the latter term signifies unwanted exposure and humiliation).

YouTube member "AmericansUnited" did not respond to requests for an interview. Representatives from MoveOn.org and Americans United for Change declined to say whether the posting of these ads was part of a deliberate strategy. A YouTube spokeswoman said the site had no relationship with either MoveOn.org or Americans United for Change.

Nonetheless, the strategy of employing a relatively new Web-based community for political ends is in keeping with their history of grassroots activism. Nor is it hard to imagine that a rebuttal from Web-savvy GOP supporters is far behind; with political spending projected to top $22 billion for TV ads alone in the 2006 races, according to BIA Financial Network, the possibilities of YouTube's free service can't be far from any campaign director's mind.

The "Caught Red-Handed" ads aren't the only ones to surface on YouTube so far. Political posters have been coming out of the woodwork since at least August 2005, when a supporter of Democrat Janet Napolitano, who was kicking off her campaign for reelection as governor of Arizona in November 2006, posted a clip of the candidate speaking to an enthused crowd.

In October, a supporter posted clips of Senator George Allen speaking at a rally for Republican Jerry Kilgore, who was then running for governor of Virginia.

More recently, last month, a YouTube user called "Scarce" started a group to support Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont, who is seeking to unseat incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman in the primaries, first by posting Lamont's acceptance speeches and then his campaign ads--as well as excerpts from Lieberman's ads that are considered damaging.