Barack Obama's Local-TV ad campaign

by Mark Silva

All politics really are local, Nielsen suggests.

With a look at the overall TV campaign ad-buys of the Obama and McCain campaigns. (This doesn't account for the ads placed by the political parties or supporting organizations, as if this number is not big enough.)

President-elect Barack Obama placed 155 percent more "spot" TV ads in local media markets than Sen. John McCain did during their general election contest (early June through early November), according to Nielsen

It's not really surprising, in that the real contest for the presidency was waged in a dwindling number of battleground states that began with about 16 or 17 and shrunk to a handful in the final days. The deluge of ad-buys came in Ohio, Florida and the like.

This is Nielsen's tally:

SPOT TV BUYS (6/08 to 11/08):

OBAMA - 419,667

MCCAIN- 269,992

Yet the Republican nominee kept pace with Obama in cable and broadcast network TV ad buys if one looks back as far as January: (Going back to January, the two candidates aired a total of about 850,000 TV ads.)

CABLE AND NETWORK TV BUYS (1/08 to 11/08):

OBAMA - 3004

MCCAIN - 2868

Obama's ads appeared more than twice as much as McCain's did in the final month before the election (210,245 vs. 97,023 ad buys, though the Republican National Committee also was airing a lot of McCain's TV ads.)

McCain also took early advantage of Obama's long primary battle with then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (soon to be Madame Secretary of State), 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, Nielsen has found.

Moral of the story: Run local.

And raise more than $600 million for your campaign.