Olympic Deal Sealed: Obama Makes $5 Million Buy

[jefferson_dem]

Olympic Deal Sealed: Obama Makes $5 Million Buy
Candidate's Package Includes National Network, Cable
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: July 23, 2008

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- It's official. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will be among the TV sponsors of NBC Universal's Olympics coverage. In the first significant network-TV buy of any presidential candidate in at least 16 years, the Obama campaign has taken a $5 million package of Olympics spots that includes network TV as well as cable ads.

According to NBC's political file, the campaign had initially requested information about 500,000, $2 million and $4 million package of Olympics spots. The network also offered the candidate a $10 million package.

NBC Universal is airing 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage on its broadcast network and cable networks including NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Oxygen and Telemundo, and while some of the Obama campaign's spots will air on network TV, the breakdown of how many or exactly when they will air was not immediately available. It did encompass most dayparts.

The Obama campaign did not return several calls and messages seeking comment on the reasoning behind the buy.

The Obama campaign will join major advertisers including McDonald's and Anheuser-Busch. The Beijing games begin with opening ceremonies Aug. 8.

While Rudy Giuliani's campaign did a tiny buy to air political ads on "Fox News Sunday" in consecutive weeks, the Obama campaign's spending on the high-rated and expensive Olympics top anything that has been done on network TV by presidential candidates in years.

The last network TV spot bought by a presidential contender was apparently a single multi-minute ad run by Republican Sen. Bob Dole in 1996.

Presidential candidates have mostly used their advertising to target battleground states, turning to cheaper cable buys when they sought national scope.

Obama campaign officials have said before that, in addition to swing-state buys, they were looking at the possibility of doing national advertising and were looking at a variety of options including cable channels such as MTV and BET and potentially the Olympics.

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http://adage.com/article?article_id=129853

[Bullet1987]

1. Good! But are the Olympics still watched by a lot of people?

[DFLforever]

2. I bet these ads feature him and his VP!

He'll announce the VP the week before.

[cbc5g]

4. That's very possible

[MadMaddie]

3. Talk about strategy!! What can McCain do to trump this?

McCain's adds have been absolutely horrible so far and they are going to get more desperate.

Obama's campaign seems to be always 50 steps ahead of McCain's....I am enjoying this immensely.

[ms liberty]

8. Isn't it fun! I love having a candidate that's on offense! n/t

[thewiseguy]

5. Awesome!

:bounce:

[creeksneakers2]

6. Great idea!

Hit all 50 states with ads.

[Cha]

7. Our campaign money at work! Surely there

will be people watching the Summer Olympics from Beijing who need to know more about what our Democratic nominee is about. And, I'm sure the ads will be state of the art for their time slot.

[AtomicKitten]

9. Go get 'em, Barack !!!

[jazzjunkysue]

10. Good because the B.S. flip-flopping atack ads started here today

and Barack needs to fight back.

[snowbear]

11. Those flip-flopping ads look like a group of 3rd graders produced them..

Apologies to third graders everywhere ... but my God, the old man can't even get his 527's to run an ad that doesn't look like total crap!




Kudos to the Obama campaign on the Olympic ad buy!!!

[Leftist Agitator]

12. Fucking beautiful!

"...NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Oxygen and Telemundo..."

In other words, Obama's campaign will be airing spots in the following demographics: General broadcast, business crowd, political junkies, general audience that leans heavily male, general audience that leans heavily female, and the largest Spanish-language channel in N. America (provided that Univision isn't currently larger).

Most excellent.

[Trajan]

13. Wonderful .....

EXACTLY what he needs to do .... go big and go wide ....

Brilliant ....

[MrSlayer]

14. Time to make another donation.

He should buy major ads during the World Series.

[liberalla]

16. That's what I was thinking!

:kick:

[comtec]

15. Very efficient use of money

if you think about it, it's a very small amount of money considering what he'd have to spend to hit all those market, and all those networks. It's like advertising on the superbowl. mill dollars a minute, but a very large audience.