Follow the TV Ad money this cycle towards more targeted buys

The National Journal has a fantastic article off its front page called “Follow The Money” that analyzes the record-breaking amount of money spent on TV ads in the 2006 cycle. The article is only available to subscribers so we will tease a bit of it for you to taste. The lede goes like this:

If couch potatoes thought that they were hit with an unusually high number of campaign ads in 2006, it's probably because they were. Analysts are reporting record spending on TV advertising during the midterm cycle. But perhaps more notable than the bombardment of ads was the rise of new strategies that helped candidates target voters more effectively, thus earning them more bang for their buck.

Total spending on broadcast TV political advertising surged to more than $2.1 billion in 2006, a $1 billion increase from the 2002 midterm election cycle, Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence recently told AdWeek. A report by the non-partisan research firm PQ Media also found that political advertising hit a new record in 2006, fueled by the number of competitive races. TV "[a]dvertising expenditures will account for 69 percent of all political media spending in 2006, up from 67.5 percent in 2004," the report states.

The sheer numbers ($2.1 billion) and percentages (69 percent of all media spending) show how important it is to make sure progressives develop the best possible strategies to maximize their impact in this still critical television space. And the bulk of the piece explained how the shift to cable television buys is a central part of those new strategies.

This is something that the New Politics institute has been championing for the last year, most notably in our New Tools campaign in the fall. Our Buy Cable memo made the rounds during the fall and may have made some difference in changing habits, though there still is a long way to go. From the article:

The PQ Media report found that broadcast TV remains the dominant medium for political advertising and "will command the largest share of political media spending in 2006" with 50 percent. That is still lower than 2004, however, when campaigns spent about 53 percent of advertising expenditures on broadcast TV, and from 2002, when they spent 56 percent.

The whole piece is anchored by an extended quote from the NPI Buy Cable memo that sums up the trend:

"Advertising across an entire media market is a little like hammering a nail with a sledgehammer," a report [PDF] by the New Politics Institute, an offshoot of the Democratic group NDN, suggests. The report estimates that viewers of an ad for a New Jersey Senate candidate on Philadelphia broadcast TV will be viewed by almost three times as many voters in Pennsylvania and Delaware as in New Jersey. The report goes on to note that "cable allows you to ensure that almost all of your advertising dollars go into the targeted state or district -- in some cases down to the precinct or zip code."

Peter Leyden