I think they all did about the same.

The different systems that the candidates are using:

Obama hired Blue State Digital, for their out-of-the-box solution is basically the DNC's PartyBuilder that was launched in '06, packaged for Obama. BSD started with what was built during Dean's campaign, and have had the time and investment since then to be able to build out an integrated website solution. It's a good system, they've invested a ton into building it, and it now drives a plethora of good blogging communities (Think Progress) and organizations and state platforms. The lacking of it is that it's limited in terms of web 2.0 interaction, and it feels like it's out of the box too, like Dean Inc that's went all public.

Clinton hired Mayfield Strategies. You think the website looks and feels like JohnKerry.com's '04 one? MS was formed by the team that came out of John Kerry's 2004 campaign. It's a fully loaded platform. There's no one better at UI, that's for sure. Their websites are clean, professional, and exceptional in performance. The tools are comparable to BSD's, especially with LTE's and event organizing. Their weakness is also a lack of 2.0, and excepting the different shade of color, they all look the same too.

Edwards hired Plus Three. They were the firm that did the DNC in '04. They have been developing a suite of tools that rivals BSD's, and they are rivals too. What's interesting about Plus Three for Edwards is that they hired the other partners from my old firm (PT), to incorporate the scoop community format into their product offering. That's One Corps. It's an interesting geneology that leads from Kuro5hin.org to ForClark.com in '03 to DailyKos/MyDD in '04, to a bunch of org's and clients for '06, to OneCorps now. I don't have anything to do with the Scoop platform since early '06-- it's back to being Rusty's baby.

Richardson started with Plus Three, then moved to Blue State Digital, and is one campaign that is in need of a in-house solution.

Clark and Dodd work with a few other firms, but the interesting thing here is that they both work off of the other platform that came out of the Dean campaign, that utilizes Drupal. I think Clark is on it to stay, but Dodd might start developing an in-house solution.

Hmmm...  Let's not assume that these numbers are dead on right.  For starters, there's a bunch of fuzziness in how you define "internet spending".

I tried to do an analysis of 2004 spending, spent dozens of hours on it, and ultimately decided that it wasn't reliable enough to publish.

The questions:

* Do you count bandwidth and hosting expenses?  

* Do you count salaries and expenses for internet staff?  Are you sure you're not undercounting or overcounting?  

* Are you able to separate out design expenses for the net from design expenses for other materials (given that some design firms do both)?

* Are internet advertising expenses considered an internet expense - or a fundraising expense?

* Given that there are consulting firms that do both internet consulting and other kinds of consulting (say, M+R), how do you split out those expenses?

...and those are just the questions I remember off the top of my head, two and half years later.  It's really tough to get to apples and apples.  Some campaigns, for example, hire consultants - while others hire staff.  If you count the former, but not the latter, you're not comparing apples to apples.