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The U.S. is a big country, but the presidential campaign is playing out across only a small slice of it. This mammoth ad blitz is mainly concentrated in about 15 key media markets in nine swing states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado. That's an even narrower playing field than in recent years. The campaigns have gone dark in Pennsylvania, long considered up for grabs but now solidly blue. "Both sides clearly agree on the few places to spend," says Erika Franklin Fowler, director of the Wesleyan Media Project. "It's much more highly concentrated than in 2008," when Obama and John McCain mounted advertising campaigns in a half-dozen additional states. Fifty-five percent of the money spent to date has been spent in swing states, according to NBC's advertising analysis.
The playing field may be smaller, but the spending has come faster and earlier than ever before. A voter in Columbus saw as many political ads in July as she would have in September 2008, says Elizabeth Wilner, who tracks advertising for Campaign Media Analysis Group. The Obama campaign spent the summer blasting away at Romney's image while he restocked his coffers after an expensive primary fight. Meanwhile, well-funded GOP super PACs responded with assaults on Obama's management of the economy. "I don't know that there's been anything quite like this in the past," says Law. "There was much more substantial advertising in the late spring and early summer than before."
So far those two giant money machines have ground to one of the most expensive stalemates in history, although Obama has generally run a nose ahead of Romney in polls. Yet no one dreams of scaling back the spending. "The amazing thing," says Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 White House campaign, "is that both sides are spending at this furious rate, and nothing's changed. So the feeling is that we have to keep spending or something will change."
And Romney has only begun to spend in earnest. A long primary battle depleted his campaign bank account, which Romney spent the spring and summer restocking--mostly with cash that Federal Election Commission regulations prevented him from spending until after his official nomination. "It cost us $135 million to get the nomination. They got it for free," says Romney media strategist Stuart Stevens. "That's just how it is."
Now Romney has launched his counterattack. Even as hungover Democrats flew home from Charlotte, the Romney campaign was launching a major new ad blitz across 10 states. The ads hit Obama on economic issues tailored by state: sputtering housing markets in Florida, rising debt in Iowa, possible defense cuts in Virginia and Colorado, weak manufacturing in Ohio and so on.
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, is targeting voters differently. Obama has heavily relied on local cable- and satellite-television buys, allowing them to target demographic niches--the single women who watch OWN, perhaps, or the non-college-educated white men who watch ESPN. And while Democrats are sure to be outspent by Republican super PACs, the GOP's advantage is blunted by the fact that television stations must offer discounted advertising rates to the party nominees, while outside groups will pay rates that have been bid up to two or three times that price.