Presidential Campaign Ads Top $100 Million

Presidential candidates have spent a lot of money flooding your television sets with advertising during this campaign season. So much that they have already spent $107 million on TV ads as of last Sunday, a new study out of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project found, and that was before Republican candidate Mitt Romney began his televised assault in some Super Tuesday states and before Barack Obama's "Change" ad showcased his message to last night's Super Bowl viewers.

While dozens of states scooted up their primaries and caucuses to Super Tuesday believing that holding an earlier primary would make their states more relevant to the nominating process, the holding of essentially a nationwide primary drove most television advertising to the even earlier primary states. Iowa and New Hampshire voters got the most TV ads thrown at them, followed by South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, and Michigan.

"Change" so far has been the magic word of this campaign. Barack Obama used "change" in 37 percent of his TV ads. Hillary Clinton used both "experience" and "change," using "experience" 30 percent of the time and "change" 27 percent of the time. None of Obama's ads touted "experience." In addition, Mitt Romney was a fan of "change" using the term in 29 percent of his ads.

And flags were the most popular symbol the presidential candidates used. John McCain depicted flags  in 77 percent of his commercials. Rudy Giuliani had a flag in 65 percent of his. John Edwards used flags more than any other Democratic candidate, dawning the stars and stripes in 49 percent of his ads.

The wealth of the Democratic candidates in this cycle showed in the amount they were able to spend on advertising. Obama was the biggest spender—airing almost 30,000 ads costing the Senator from Illinois $57 million. Hillary Clinton aired more than 25,500 ads totaling more than $18 million. For the GOP, Mitt Romney led in advertisements, airing almost 35,000 commercials costing the former Massachusetts governor $29 million, more than all the other GOP contenders combined.

Though as we have seen, television advertising dollars may not necessarily translate to victories. While Romney outspent McCain in Florida by millions, McCain had a clean win last weekend in the Sunshine State.

—Nikki Schwab