So far this year, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has placed more political ads than any other two presidential candidates combined, according to The Nielsen Company findings. Altogether, Romney placed 10,893 political ads from 1/1 to 10/10/2007, compared to 5,975 for Bill Richardson and 4,293 for Barack Obama, the two runners-up. Almost 95% of the total 28,725 presidential campaign ads placed this year were on local television, and over 71% of those were placed in Iowa. During August, HillaryClinton.com (759,000) and BarackObama.com (749,000) continued to be in a tight race for the most unique visitors to their campaign websites.
Overall, the Democrats have taken the lead in running Presidential campaign advertising, with a total of 16,683 TV spots compared to 12,042 spots by the Republican candidates. Hillary Clinton has only run half as many ads as Richardson or Obama, but has spread her advertising around in many more states.
With nearly 11,000 ads, Romney has far outpaced his Republican rivals. John McCain, for example, has run 166 local ads, all in New Hampshire, and Fred Thompson has run 13 ads, all on national cable. Both McCain and Thompson have only recently started running spots, with their ads airing since September.
Rudy Giuliani continues his strategy of running ads exclusively on radio with a total of 642 spots airing during this time period.
