Change? I Think It's Time For One

By: Jon Njos, VP/Partner/Media Director

Every two years, advertisers and advertising agencies are confronted with the specter of competing for advertising inventory with politicians and Political Action Committees (PAC). We just endured that time of year when every consecutive TV ad running on the air was a political ad, pushing a particular candidate or cause. The closer we got to the election, the more we were bombarded with these ads.

The problem I’m having, along with other agency and media salespeople, is that politicians get dibs on any inventory they want—whether it has already been sold or not. I guess it’s the patriotic duty of those of us who actually work for a living to forget about promoting our businesses or our clients’ business so candidates have the opportunity to pound the hell out of the populace with biased messages.

As of January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the thumbs up to lift spending limits on campaigns and open the forum for any politician and special interest group to spend away. Now I know this can easily become a political debate about fairness and how this gives corporations a bigger voice in elections than individual human beings, but what I have a problem with is politicians taking my clients’ inventory away at an even lower rate than we might be paying. A PAC can take it away by paying 3x the rate while still receiving priority and special treatment. Let them advertise all they want, but let them compete for the inventory like the rest of us do.

It becomes magnified the closer we get to election day. In states with highly contested elections, the candidates pour buckets of money into those markets. We here at the Stanton & Everybody spend most of our days in the last two weeks of October handling preemptions. The Seattle TV market predicted at the start of the year political advertising money would reach $15,000,000…it ended up being $54,000,000.

That’s why I propose that there should only be one week GIVEN to the politicians to utilize all advertising inventory—the week before the election. All other weeks, they can certainly advertise, but at the competitive level that we all do. If inventory is available, they get to negotiate and compete for it like any other business does.


http://adage.com/article?article_id=141633