A Google spokesman vehemently denied Thursday that President Obama's 2012 campaign got early access to a new advertising program, claiming a sales rep who suggested as much was just plain wrong.
The technology in question, called "cost-per-lead," charges clients for every time a piece of personal information is collected from users. A staff member at the National Republican Senatorial Committee thought he was looking at an early version of the program after he saw an Obama ad on the site RealClearPolitics last month and emailed Google about the possibility of getting in on the action.