As the dust settles on a tumultuous election, the overarching story from the online perspective is the rise of blogs and consumer-generated media to play a significant role in the 2006 elections. Whether for fundraising or organization as was the case with Ned Lamont’s victory in the Connecticut Democratic Primary or Senator George Allen’s unfortunate “macaca” incident spread virally through YouTube, clearly the online world had an important impact on this election.

However, the untold story of this election will be the lost opportunity of online advertising to target voters. With the rise of TiVo and studies showing more time being shifted online both at work and at home, political campaigns continued to pour millions into television and other traditional advertising, and a comparatively small percentage spent for online advertising. As campaigns assess what went wrong (or what went right in some cases), more will ultimately come to the conclusion that they need to shift advertising dollars and prioritize online spending to account for shifts in time spent online.