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

 

A recent Nielsen Homescan analysis on the shopping habits of Obama and McCain supporters was reported in a article titled, Retail Politics: Shopping Insights For Obama & McCain Voters

The analysis shows notable differences in the shopping habits and holiday spending expectations of the American voter. The panel’s voting intent (55% Obama / 45% McCain) was similar to the actual nationwide election results (53% / 47%) and mirrored the state-by-state victories in all but three of the 48 contiguous states.

According to Nielsen Homescan, voters who favored Obama, tended to make more frequent trips across all outlets combined and in traditional retail channels.  While McCain voters may have made fewer trips, they visited the retail giant WalMart at a higher rate, and tend to outspend Democratic voters in terms of per-trip dollars.

Interestingly, despite massive electoral losses and concern about the prospect of higher taxes, the report also showed that McCain voters are slightly more optimistic about holiday spending. McCain voters also expressed more optimism about spending on entertainment inside and outside the home.

Nielson has a more in-depth presentation of these findings, with bar charts and all, here

A few months ago I came to the conclusion that the cable news networks (FNC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC) would do considerably well during this presidential season – outperforming 2004 and general expectations.  I also made the assumption that the cable news networks would do even better during the course of both Party conventions.  Now, I’m not claiming that these predictions were anything earth shattering, as anyone who pays attention to voter viewing habits, election coverage and ratings probably could have come to the same conclusion a few months ago as well.

However, I was so sure of this magnetic effect of viewership to the cable networks that I made several arguments in the past few weeks to clients and buyers to consider putting much more emphasis into purchasing airtime during nightly convention action.

So it does warm my heart to see hard data reaffirming my prediction.

In a story posted today, Matea Gold of the L.A. Times reported a small piece on the convention viewership draw to broadcast and the cable networks.

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention drew more than 22 million TV viewers, a 20% larger audience than in 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research.

NBC drew the most viewers, pulling an average of 4.71 million viewers for its hour long special anchored by Brian Williams, up 4% from four years ago.

Overall, the picture was even rosier for cable news networks, whose decision to devote nearly all their programming to convention coverage paid off.

CNN averaged 4.27 million viewers, beating the broadcast networks for the first time with its convention coverage.

All three posted major gains over 2004. 

There are a few reasons for the substantial increase that I predicted.  Here are a few supporting points – some are more obvious than others:

Check out after the jump

(more…)