Turns out the ads are only pointed at players in ten states--ten states that allow voters to vote early. So according to the Boston Globe, if you're in Iowa, Ohio, Montana, Indiana, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, New Mexico, Florida, or Colorado, you can turn on Burnout Paradise, Madden NFL 09, and a handful of other games with in-game ad support and see what has to be the first example of election ads appearing in video games.
Well, I guess it's nice that a big presidential campaign sees the game-playing audience as important enough to reach by any means necessary. But we probably shouldn't assume this means that Obama (or any candidate, really) is actually in favor of games. Dude may have owned up to playing Pong at one point, but I believe his last on-the-record statement about games involved something like "kids should go outside." Oh well, at least it's not the usual--like an embarrassing "appearance" in Second Life.
Whichever candidate hops onto a DDR mat first has my vote.
On a similar note, College OTR put a copy of Photoshop to good use today by dropping fake Obama ads into GTA IV, Halo, and so on. Check it out.