Obama outspending McCain four to one

New York, Oct.21 : Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is outspending Republican rival John McCain in TV ads by nearly four to one, according to the independent Campaign Media Analysis Group.

The New York Daily News quoted Sarah Niebler, deputy director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, as saying that Obama would smash President Bush's 2004 record of 188 million dollars in TV spending any day now.

Last week alone, Obama broadcast some 50,000 30-second spots on national, local and cable TV channels, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

To put that in context, it would take 17 days of air time for the reel to end.

The disparity makes McCain's task of overcoming Obama's leads in many key battlegrounds that much harder. In some hotly contested areas, the advertising score is not just lopsided, it's a complete shutout.

Take Florida, a critical swing state. Last week, Obama aired 1,120 TV spots in Miami. McCain on the other hand had Zero.

On the Internet, the matchup is even worse. Last month, Team Obama posted more than 914 million Web-based ads, more than half of them on Yahoo.com, according to data compiled by Nielsen Online.

McCain sprang for only 7.8 million similar ads - or 1/117th of Obama's, a Nielsen research found.

Obama can outspend McCain because, after promising to accept public campaign dollars and the spending limits that go with them, he instead opted to raise money privately.

ANI