TNS-CMAG’s (Campaign Media Advertising Group) June newsletter on political advertising research shed’s light on 2009 campaign ad spending and off-year political advertising trends.

According to CMAG’S Evan Tracey,

The year following a presidential election is historically the least active in terms of political ad spending. However, current hot-button topics such as healthcare, energy issues, budget woes and job security are keeping commercial breaks full of advocacy advertisements.

To date, over $100 million has been spent on direct federal issue-related ads and even more on ads that address policy — a 10-fold increase from four years ago.

As the new political landscape takes shape, several states have already emerged as make-or-break for both parties. The importance of these must-win states is evident by the fact that a number of seats not up for grabs until 2010 are already seeing political ads, even before Memorial Day 2009. This strategy proved successful in the past as seen with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who was a big target in 2008 and began airing re-election ads in November of 2007. Just this week, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) began his re-election campaign with a new ad.

Already in 2009, we’ve seen a great deal spent on advertising for varying political and issue campaigns. CMAG points to a few spending highlights in the first half of the year:

• $15.9 million — total spent this year on TV advertising targeting mayor’s races around the country.
• New Jersey governor’s race has seen approximately $3 million in TV ad spending.
• More than $100 million has been spent on federal issue-related advertisements to date this year.
• A total of approximately $11.7 million has been spent on ads targeting ballot measures.

Here’s a chart illustrating the comparison of political related ad spending in off years.

Washington Post Staff Writer Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece today highlighting a trend I have been discussing for a while, the concept of making an ad for talk, not for air.

Kurtz calls refers to them as phantom spots – and for lack of a better name, that’s what I’ll call them.

Using Phantom Spots is a tactic that’s feverishly taken off this election cycle.  Here’s how it goes:

• Determine a searing line of attack on opponent
• Construct a :30 or :60 second ad
• Claim it’s a new ad that the campaign is running
• Show it to the media
• Run it just a few times to factually back the claim that it’s a legitimate spot

Kurtz highlights several examples of how this tactic was used this election cycle:

Sen. John McCain received considerable publicity for a television ad accusing his Democratic opponent of having “lashed out at Sarah Palin, dismissed her as good-looking . . . then desperately called Sarah Palin a liar. How disrespectful.”

In the two weeks after the Republican convention, the commercial aired seven times.

Sen. Barack Obama drew substantial media attention for a spot declaring: “John McCain is hardly a maverick. . . . Sarah Palin’s no maverick, either. She was for the ‘Bridge to

Nowhere’ before she was against it. Politicians lying about their records.” During the same period, that commercial aired eight times.

In the two-week period that ended Sunday, the McCain campaign released 25 ads, 12 of which aired fewer than 25 times. The Obama campaign released 28 ads, 11 of which aired fewer than 25 times.

My friend EVAN TRACEY of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group has a good take on these Phantom Spots, “They’ve smartly figured out that there’s news of the day, and by feeding the content beast that is cable news and the blogosphere, they’re getting out their unfiltered take on the news of the day.”

Kurtz goes on to describe how the campaigns are putting the least money behind their most slashing spots, like the Obama Sex Ed spot and the McCain Internet spot, which are the kind that tend to drive news coverage.

My take on these on spots, is more about the role they fill, rather than what is on TV versus what is not.

In past presidential elections, campaigns would normally have a cadre of party stalwarts stumping on behalf of the candidate, doing most of the dirty work.  They would be the visible attack dogs of the campaign, discussing the opposition candidate’s record or problems.

The only problem was, these candidates rarely received large scale national coverage.  Only in the markets where they visited, did they get their attacks covered by the news media.  So campaigns were only left with two options for getting something out to the mainstream mass media – press release or candidate remarks.

Press releases rarely carry any weight with the media anymore and attacks from the candidate appeared to close to home, often times driving up a candidate’s negatives while they attempted to drive up the negatives of their opponent.

What operatives and consultants realized was that the media likes to cover the release of any new advertising.  It’s sexier, it has substance – audio and visual.  Most importantly for the campaign, it has the appearance of a third party making the attack.  Rarely do you see one candidate attack another in a political TV spot.

So the Phantom Spots, have become the new campaign attack surrogates, with video to match.