The Ohio Ad Wars

THE OHIO AD WARS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kate Phillips]
As the Democratic primary race moves to Pennsylvania, an analysis of the television ad spending in neighboring Ohio may offer a few lessons along the way. About $8 million was spent in the Buckeye State on television ads overall on the Democratic side, and 15 percent of that came from outside groups like labor unions and new 527-organizations. According to an examination by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, based on data from the TNS Media Intelligence Campaign Media Analysis Group of ads on local TV stations, Senator Barack Obama spent almost twice as much as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: He laid out about $4.4 million for a little more than 10,000 spots, compared with her $2.3 million for a little more than 6,000 spots. The only Ohio city where she ran more ads than he did was Youngstown. Beyond the ad totals for the campaigns themselves was another factor in Ohio: It was one of the first states where the labor coalitions that had just rallied behind Sen Obama began spending some of the millions of dollars they allocated to the 2008 race. Senator Clinton also had the support of a recently created “527? organization, American Leadership Project, that financed $80,000 more in ads for her in Ohio. The Wisconsin project points out that more than one-fifth of Mrs. Clinton’s ads were considered to contain negative content, as contrast ads, while less than 5 percent of Mr. Obama’s were considered to have a negative tilt.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/the-ohio-ad-wars/
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