The media as the candidates’ ad servers?
Maybe this is because I have probably paid more attention and been more actively involved in this election than any other in my life, but there is something that seems very new in this 2008 presidential election cycle. Granted, I live in a state where John McCain could be an alien from Mars and stil get 60% of the vote over Barack Obama and therefore have not seen one presidential campaign television ad, but it seems that the television networks and many of the online news sources seem to become the ad servers for the respective campaigns. For both Obama and McCain, I have seen stories about the ads that their respective campaigns has put out - either on television or online-exlcusively, without having actually seen the ad in person.
A perfect example are the two recent “controversial” ads from McCain’s campaign - the “celebrity” one and the one that compares Obama to the Antichrist (seriously). In both cases, they were ads that were shown either in a selective market (celebrity) or online (antichrist). But in both cases, they made the front page of CNN.com and also on Google’s news page. So, therefore McCain got national play for what should have amounted to local ads. I have seen similar examples with Obama’s ads.
Not sure that the networks should be in the business of putting these ads out further than they were intended. Is it really “news” that McCain’s campaign came up with these ads? Not so sure.
UDPATE: The NY Times also comments on this much more eloquently than me.
UPDATE 2: CNN does the same with Obama’s new ad…
3 Comments so far
Leave a reply
That’s interesting because not only does that happen, but then the pundits start spinning it. Controversy is a great vehicle for PR and ads like these stir the pot.
Its really weird to see how this is all unfolding this campaign season.
I also wonder how much of this is the fact that fewer people are actually watching commercials in this age of downloadable TV shows, TiVo, DVRs, etc
True. It seems like viral marketing is going to have the biggest impact in who the next president is. I do think that Obama has the edge since his campaign has been so tech savvy. But McCain has the advantage of the conservative media pundits who are louder and more brash and just draw a bigger crowd than the liberal media pundits.