Candidate spending on advertising in Iowa way up since 2004

[cali]

Iowa Saturated by Political Ads

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: December 28, 2007

DES MOINES — One week before Iowa kicks off the presidential nomination contest, the campaigns are spending three times as much money flooding the airwaves and the Internet as candidates did in 2004, hoping to sway the huge number of undecided voters after months of on-the-ground appeals.

In one of her single biggest television expenditures here, advisers said Thursday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, is spending more than $20,000 to broadcast a two-minute taped message during every 6 p.m. newscast in Iowa on the eve of the caucuses, Jan. 2, which will be seen by an estimated 515,510 adults in the state.

Mitt Romney is preparing a new advertising blitz this weekend in hopes of stemming the momentum of his 11th-hour breakaway Republican rival here, Mike Huckabee.

And, signaling the sharpening tone of the advertising wars, Rudolph W. Giuliani’s campaign released a commercial Thursday invoking imagery of Sept. 11, a tactic President Bush’s campaign was criticized for in 2004.

The campaigns are still unsure whether to use negative advertisements against opponents here. For now, they are calibrating their mainly positive advertisements to reflect the themes playing out here: change vs. status quo politics, new ideas on domestic concerns and Iraq vs. old thinking, the need for fresh leadership, and their respect for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28ads.html?ref=us

[MonkeyFunk]

1. It only costs $20,000

to get two minutes of airtime during the evening news... in every market in the state?

That seems awfully cheap.