Battle of the giants

 
Election advertising America is in election fever. The race for the US presidency is generating billions in profits for TV broadcasters in particular. 
Super Tuesday's election day is over, and apart from Republican Senator John McCain, who is likely to become his party's presidential candidate, nothing has been decided. The whole country, and with it the whole world, is watching the neck-and-neck race between the two Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama with fascination and wondering how long it will continue at this pace. A long election campaign means a lot of spending on marketing. Each of the candidates spent over 100 million dollars before Super Tuesday. According to a study by the market research institute Borrell Associates, the total amount spent on political advertising this year will be a record 4.8 billion dollars. Television stations will earn 60 percent of this sum. Revenue for online advertising is rather disappointing, with only 20 million dollars or half a percent predicted.
However, the fact that election advertising alone is not enough was made clear by the example of Republican Mitt Romney. He spent around 30 million dollars on TV advertising alone and still dropped out of the race last week. Things went far better for John McCain, who concentrated on the decisive state of New Hampshire early on and, after winning there, gained plenty of donations for his next targets.
Marginalized groups benefit
The situation is more complicated on the Democratic side. "We have two candidates who have their budgets together and are spending the money raised immediately," says Evan Tracey from the Campaign Analysis Group of media research company TNS Media Intelligence. "Over the next few weeks, spending will be highly targeted and concentrated in hotly contested states." These "battleground states" are primarily populous states such as Ohio and Texas, where elections will be held in early March and where money is increasingly being poured into Spanish-language media. Campaign spending is expected to gradually taper off with the Pennsylvania primary at the end of April.
Worryingly for Hillary Clinton, at the end of January there was a veritable shower of donations in favor of Obama, who immediately took advantage of this and ran numerous TV ads in the Super Tuesday states. While Obama had 16 million dollars at his disposal, Clinton was only able to spend 12 million that week. Clinton even had to temporarily draw 5 million dollars from her private account. It is significant that Clinton spent 4 million dollars more on political consultants and media advisors than Obama with only 1.4 million. This confirms Obama's reputation for being less accessible to the media than Clinton, who regularly goes out of her way to schmooze with the traveling press entourage.
Despite the low level of election advertising on the Internet, this medium does play a role in the election campaign. A survey by polling firm SS&K found that 40 percent of voters in New Hampshire have visited at least one candidate's website, and 25 percent have looked at their profiles on networking sites such as MySpace. For future races, campaign strategists are keeping a close eye on the media consumption habits of the under-30 demographic, 52 percent of whom browsed the candidates' websites, which included blogs, YouTube channels and Facebook pages.
So far, the so-called 527 groups, special interest organizations that campaign for or against a candidate on their own initiative, have not made much of an appearance. As was the case four years ago, when Democratic candidate John Kerry in particular was subject to attacks from the right-wing camp, they are only expected to play a role once the two presidential candidates are clear. "What we'll see then are the special interest character assassination campaigns," says Tobe Berkovitz, communications professor at Boston University.
The question is whether the Democratic race could run into August, when the Democratic convention takes place, and whether this could hurt the eventual nominee because there will only be just over two months until the election in early November. Party Chairman Howard Dean wants to counter this: "The idea that we're going to fight a big battle at the convention and then have to win the election in eight weeks is not a good scenario."
Gerti Schön, New York
"Television is unbeatable "In an interview with Advertising Week, Todd Gitlin, communications professor at New York's Columbia University, explains what makes news coverage stand out and why television is the most important channel for election advertising in the presidential candidates' horserace.
WW: What characterizes the coverage in this campaign? Todd Gitlin: It's long been lamented that the coverage is focused on the so-called horserace, the contest of which candidate is ahead, who wins where and so on. The longer the campaign lasts, the more difficult it is to get the public to watch, and the pressure to deliver fresh material increases over time. The good thing about everything dragging on like this is that it opens up a niche for investigative journalism, which requires time and resources. In this way, there is a chance to finally get away from the horserace and concentrate on substantive research.
What do you think of the election advertising so far? So far, it has been less characterized by mutual attacks, as was the case at the end of the last election campaign. But that doesn't mean that the content isn't just as manipulative. John McCain, for example, has launched a TV ad in which he is portrayed as the heir to Ronald Reagan, who was influenced by him during his time as a prisoner of war in the 1960s. This is ridiculous because Reagan was governor of California at the time and had demonstrated little political foresight up to that point.
Statistics show that candidates are still mainly advertising on TV. Does that surprise you? Not at all. Candidates opt for television because it is still the best way to convey a mood, an atmosphere, and that is the main aim of election advertising. Television is still unbeatable in this respect.
 
Interview: Gerti Schön