Update:

Be the first to see this—only 301 folks on youtube have, so far.

It was justreleased.

A 17-minute documentary by the Obama team (yes, it’s positive, just as Reagan’s were and Romney’s is…) from…the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim, who made “An Inconvenient Truth,” about global warming, and “Waiting for Superman,” about the failure of the American education system.

Narrated by Mr. Tom Hanks:

From the Times review. Excerpt:

It’s not exactly “Morning Again in America.” If anything, a new straight-to-the-Internet campaign video of President Obama looks more like darkness at noon.

This 17-minute re-election ad, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” that hit the Web on Thursday evening isn’t telling voters that everything is rosy after three years of the Obama presidency.

Instead, it suggests that it could all have been so much worse…read the rest here.

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Previously:

2012: the year the Internet became vital to Political Advertising.

Here’s the Times’ article about why this is a landmark social media experiment.

Excerpt:

The Obama campaign’s efforts underscore the importance that political campaigns now attach to Web video and the role the medium will probably play in the coming election. Once best known in politics as the venue for viral parodies and hastily produced response efforts, online video is vital in the way campaigns communicate with and persuade voters.

“The importance of video is so new for campaigns, even relative to ’08,” said Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director. “Now it’s in some ways the primary way our digital operation communicates with supporters. And increasingly it will be the primary way we communicate with undecided voters.”

…

“This year it’s all about getting your message into those trusted networks because everyone is suspicious about politicians,” said Darrell West, of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. “It’s hard to be persuasive through a direct advertisement. But if you can get people to share videos, it adds a degree of credibility because a friend is endorsing it. People will take it more seriously.”

We’ll post the full video here as soon as it’s available.