• A recent Congressional Research Service Report confirmed that what we know for absolute certain about the new federal CTO job doesn't amount to all that much. But Christopher J. Dorobek has some intriguing new reporting that shines much light on the situation. What we've been talking about as the CTO post, writes Dorobek, actually breaks down into two jobs...
• "It's not the Democratic party anymore," says one "highly placed" Democrat. "It's the Obama party." That's one of the more striking bits of Lisa Taddeo's new Esquire profile of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe...
• National Journal's David Herbert makes the case that what's limiting federal agencies' online impact isn't so much the Paperwork Reduction Act and other regulations as it is the challenges of connecting to an audience...
• There's some chatter starting to happen around the idea that the some $9 billion or so in broadband money in the stimulus package is a bad bet...
• And more.

The problems of comparing ActBlue to ABC PAC; a profile of Robert Bluey's Conservative Bloggers Briefings; and why aren't more candidates using Google Adwords to advertise against news- and issues-based keywords?

The Web on the Candidates

Mitt Romney's appearance in YouTube's Spotlight series has been a a big success, writes the TubeMogul blog. His video views have skyrocketed -- "looking at Mitt’s own YouTube views, it almost looks as if he wasn’t online prior to that video – he went from about 3K views a day to 125K on 4/13!" It's interesting that although Romney's videos have peaked at around 125,000 views, they've since fallen to around 40,000 views a day. "From a little analysis you can find that the majority of Romney’s views were for his one video asking for information, not on videos where planks of his platform are espoused. Will Mitt be able to continue the debate on YouTube with the energy he just started?," TubeMogul writes.

At the National Association of Broadcasters/Radio Television News Directors Association in Las Vegas, Jeff Jarvis heard some interesting news about the state of political advertising on television and online. At a panel on which he appeared, a "political media man" said that while he was used to spending 80 percent of his money on TV, he was now spending 60 percent online. And at the same session, Joe Trippi "said that the Hillary Clinton 1984 commercial was viewed 4 million times on YouTube but probably 50-60 million times with broadcast included. A message that clicks can be made for nothing and seen by the nation."

The Web on the Candidates -- Daily Digest Lite

Over PrezVid Jeff Jarvis takes a look at what presidential candidates are advertising using Google AdSense, and whose keywords they're advertising with. The most active advertisers are Hillary Clinton -- who's advertising on Obama, Biden, and Dodd searches, and Rudy Giuliani -- who's advertising on McCain, Brownback, Tancredo and the phrase "flat tax." This basically means that when you do a search for, say, McCain or Tancredo, you may see an ad for Giuliani on the right side of the page. Take a closer look at the post for many more interesting results, including the fact that "no one — no candidate, no brand, no news organization, no one — is advertising against “Bush” and “George W. Bush”, even negatively. Nobody wants any of that on them."