Nielson has produced some very interesting post-Election ad spending analysis.  If you interested in reading more about Nielson’s work in this area I highly recommend Nielson Wire/Politics.  

In a recent post titled, How Obama’s Local Buys Added Up, Nielsen examines all the ad buys by the 2008 Presidential candidates.  The conclusion: local spot TV was the principle component of the Barack Obama TV buy strategy.

Spot television is all advertising time that is available from local TV stations.  Local Spot advertising is selectively buying on one or more targeted stations in each market separately.  These are purchased through the individual stations.  This is different from National Spots, which is advertising handled at a larger scale, where an advertising will cover several markets over a large region or across the country. 

Acoording to Nielson, “President-elect Barack Obama placed one-and-a-half times as many spot TV ads than John McCain during the general election season (6/08 to 11/08), and almost twice as many ads dating back to the beginning of January when the primaries were just heating up.”

The local numbers show a much bigger discrepancy than those for national cable and network buys. Sen. McCain kept pace w/ President-elect Obama in those categories, with Obama edging out his rival by just 136 ad buys in the cable and network combined, dating back to January.

Other notable campaign facts from Nielsen’s research

• Obama’s ads were on the airwaves over twice as much as McCain’s in the final month before the election (210,245 vs. 97,023 ad buys).
• McCain took early advantage of Obama’s long primary battle with Hillary Clinton, which ended on June 3rd. McCain bought over three and a half times more spot TV ads than Obama in June (26,594 to 7,251), the only month that McCain beat his opponent in that category.
• McCain made a major push with national buys in September, out placing Obama 10 to 1 in cable and network ad buys.
• The two candidates alone combined for almost 850,000 total ad buys dating back to January.

Complete Ad Spends: Jan-Nov 2008

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.

A must read  from this past Sunday’s New york Times is a piece by PAUL VITELLO titled, How to Erase that Smear.  Vitello reminds readers that attack campaigns, enlisted by politicians seeking office, have been around since the days of our founding fathers.  Below I have included excerpts of Vitello’s piece and sprinkled in some of my commentary and analysis.

When Thomas Jefferson found himself accused of planning to burn all Bibles and legalize prostitution if elected president in 1800, he was ready with a counterpunch that might make today’s most vitriolic campaign operatives stop short, if only to gape upon the greatness that once was presidential campaign slander.

Jefferson’s rival, President John Adams, was endowed with a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman”; and if re-elected he would crown himself king; and, by the way, he was “mentally deranged.”

The author of the attacks was not Jefferson himself, of course, but a master poison-pen pamphleteer named James Callender, who, historians have since determined, was bankrolled completely by Jefferson. (For his efforts, Callender spent nine months in prison under the Sedition Act for saying those things about a sitting president; Jefferson pardoned him immediately after defeating Adams and taking office.)

Essentially, negative smear campaigning is as Americana as apple pie and is arguable an older past time than baseball.

(more…)

 

According to AdAge’s IRA TEINOWITZ:

In the first significant network-TV buy of any presidential candidate in at least 16 years, the Obama campaign has taken a $5 million package of Olympics spots that includes network TV as well as cable ads.

Teinowitz points out, this is the first buy placed on the Olympics since Republican Nominee, Bob Dole placed a buy in 1996.  The Obama campaign also indicated they were looking into other non-traditional large national buys on MTV and BET.

The Obama campaign’s media strategy appears to based on three important factors:

1. Mirror traditional buys of past presidential campaigns by purchasing airtime on cable news and specific broadcast dayparts that target the most likely (higher propensity / mid propensity) voters in top targeted states
2. Use their fundraising advantage to buy less traditional political media like expensive broadcast network shows in prime time slots and…..
3. Purchase on more expensive cable networks that target non traditional, lower propensity voting, audiences that have shown greater interest in supporting Obama – MTV (younger voters) / BET (African-American voters).  He will use this last strategy to turn out a larger quantity of voters that fit naturally into his base of support.

As long as Obama can continue a strong fundraising effort, this strategy appears to be an effective way to get the votes he needs in the election.

To view Teinowitz’s full story click here.