Obama's Ad Dominance Reaffirmed

By Chris Cillizza
As the presidential campaign entered its final months, it became increasingly clear that Barack Obama was vastly outspending John McCain on television -- a massive gap that allowed the senator from Illinois to expand the playing field and led to victories in unlikely states such as Indiana and North Carolina.

New figures by the Nielsen Company reinforce just how large Obama's ad edge really was.

From June through November, Obama ran 419,667 ads in local markets while McCain ran 269,992 ads -- a difference of nearly 150,000 ads, according to Nielsen. In the final month of the election, the ad difference was even greater, with Obama's campaign running 210,425 local ads, as compared with just more than 97,000 for McCain.

McCain was able to fight to near-parity on national cable during the campaign, where Obama outpaced him 3,004 to 2,868 from January through November. But the national cable buys were no match for the precise media market by media market approach of the Obama team.

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