Campaign Ad Spending Sticks With Local TV, Ignores Web

This cycle's presidential candidates may have embraced grassroots web campaigns, but they have yet to spend significant sums on web advertising, the Wall Street Journal reports. Instead, they are sticking to local network television ads, which will account for 70% of an estimated $3 billion in advertising dollars. Evan Tracey, an advertising analyst, told the Journal that local TV ads “drive up the volume and get voters to notice you.”

Tracey argues that the web is problematic for, say, a 30-second message, or an attack ad, because the user has to want to see it. “You will see record spending on Internet advertising in this cycle,” he says, "but it will still amount to little more than a rounding error when put next to the money spent on television." (More campaign stories.)