The mecca of youth culture is opening its airwaves to a different kind of advertising.

Sandwiched between ads for Trojan brand condoms and the newest albums, loyal MTV viewers will now be inundated with the flood of campaign ads leading up to the November election.

It’s the first time the network has decided to accept political advertising since it launched in 1981.

In an effort to keep the content clean, the birthplace of such cultural gems as Bevis and Butthead and Tila Tequila will only take ads from political candidates and party political committees — not 527s, which have come under fire recently as a legal loophole for launching smear campaigns.

MTV execs say the move will highlight its efforts to engage young eligible voters in the political process and promote a youth voice on the campaign trail (Most recently, get-out-the-vote PSAs featuring the tabloids starlets of “The Hills.”).

“It’s a good thing when candidates want to reach out to young people and the best way to do that is through MTV,” MTV’s Executive VP of Communications told industry rag TVNewser.

But let’s not kid ourselves — media buys are the ultimate cash cow on the campaign trail. Campaigns these days devote upwards of 80 percent of their total budget on “paid” media, and most of that goes to television buys. MTV declined to say how much it expects to make off the deals, but there’s no need to brush off that calculus text book to see that 80 percent of a campaign that is going to cost an estimated $1 billion ain’t no chump change.

Strategists think they’ve hit the goldmine in tapping into youth vote.

“Now campaigns have the opportunity to reach young voters in a venue where they congregate,” Democratic campaign strategist Tad Devine also told TVNewser.

A place where young voters congregate? Hasn’t he heard of the Facebook-YouTube phenomenon?