POWER OF MONEY: DESPERATE OBAMA 'FLOODING' PENNSYLVANIA WITH TV ADS

[The Swamp]

Sen. Barack Obama is outspending Sen. Hillary Clinton by about three-to-one in Pennsylvania’s television campaign, an independent analsyst says – a sign that, even if Obama cannot overcome Clinton’s apparent advantage in the April 22 primary there, Obama plans to make Clinton pay for the fight.

“He has dropped a couple million bucks in his first week on the air there,’’ says Evan Tracey, chief operating officer for Campaign Media Analysis, a TNS company, an independent analyst of campaign media advertising. “If you judged it against Clinton’s, in a basketball game, it would be a rout.’’

The Obama campaign is spending about $150,000 a day now on TV advertising in Pennsylvania, Tracey said in an interview with the Tribune today – compared with about $50,000 for the Clinton camp.

Since Obama turned on his TV campaign in the Keystone State on the 21st, Tracey said, he has spent about $2 million. Since Clinton started her ads there on the 25th, she has spent about $440,000.

“Part of it is putting his fundraising advantage to work,’’ Tracey said. “If he spends a lot there, she has to spend a lot to keep up with him…. He is buying at high levels, a strategy to bring her into a war of attrition she can’t afford.''

“Strategically there is no downside to it,’’ Tracey said. Obama “is not going to burn through his cash… He floods the state with a couple weeks of ads… If he doesn’t see any noticeable tick in the polls he might pull back….. But any dollar she spends in Pennsylvania is a dollar she can’t spend in Indiana or North Carolina…. Tactically, you are forcing her to get into a fight.’’

With a half-dozen media markets in Pennsylvania, the biggest and costliest are Philadelphia’s and Pittsburgh’s.

By one media account, Obama is purchasing close to 2,000 “gross ratings points’’ of advertising in these markets – enough for the typical viewer to see an an ad 20 times during a cycle of ads. But the quality of those points is also critical – with news programs and prime-time TV costing more money.

Obama has bought a lot of prime-time TV – putting close to 40 percent of his money into it, according to Tracey. That’s a good way to “expand your coalition,’’ he notes.