They were putting out ads against Romney at the beginning of the Republican nominee campaign.

FYI data.gov launched in May 2009 after being announced by Obama's CIO in March 2009. This isn't a new effort, it's the continuation of ongoing efforts.

For example: http://ideascale.com/userimages/sub-1/736312/ConOpsFinal.pdf is a document (Dec 2009) documenting the vision for Data.gov, and http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/mem... is a memoranda from 2009 that first started requiring the online sharing of major datasets.