Edutaining Infomercial

It is incredibly amazing how out of date the Trent & Friedenberg book already is, considering its publication date is 2008. This presidential election is a first on many fronts for communication strategies. The advent of the Internet as a primary source of advertising really skews the old ways of political ads. The book mentions in Chapter 10, Section entitled Television that television ads are the only ads that appeal to both sight and sound. We know that is incredibly true of Internet ads as well. In fact, several ads this year were made exclusively for the Internet. This allowed the candidates to take up more than just 30 seconds or 60 seconds, but sometimes up to 3 minutes. It can arguably be too long for an ad, but what is a 30 minute ad called? Is it still a "commercial", or something else?

Coming October 29th is a 30-minute ad of Senator Barak Obama during primetime television. He claims it will be "closing argument" of what we have heard so far in the debates. He bought the same 8 PM timeslot on both NBC and CBS. The commercial will air during Nightrider and The New Adventures of Old Christine on each network, respectively. No official price has been released for these ads; however, each ad has been estimated at $1.5 million, totalling $3 million for the Obama campaign. There is also negotiations with FOX, but the ad would air during the World Series, so the possibility is low. In just two ads, Obama has already far exceeded the estimates given by our book for regular 30 and 60-second spots during primetime television. The only other person to do this in history was Ross Perot in 1992.

Interestingly enough, McCain will be offered the same opportunity by each network, according to federal law. However, because Obama did whip up this plan early and picked the times first, McCain may be too late to have a solid effect. Obama, realizing how close this race may be and anticipating that each state carries equal worth in spending money for ads, decided to knock it all out at once with a big media ad. This, of course, was the book's second point at noting the difficulties of television advertising.

Mark your TV Guides.