Murray Locks Down $2 Million in TV Ad Time, Most of it for General Election – It’s Gonna Get Expensive!

By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, Aug. 3.—All signs are this is going to be a mighty expensive year for anyone who wants to place a political ad on television.

            Already U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s re-election campaign has spent $2 million for broadcast TV advertising in Washington state. Another big ad buy has been made by the biggest-spending initiative campaign of the year, I-1107, the pop-tax rollback.

            The striking thing about those purchases is that most of the money isn’t for the upcoming primary election – it’s for the general election, mainly for the months of October and November. What’s happening is that the campaigns are plunking down their cash now, when the rates are low. That’s going to drive rates up for all the other campaigns in the field. And there are plenty of them with the kinds of budgets and messages that practically mandate they buy TV advertising as well.

            All of which means that if you’ve got a TV ad to place between now and November, you better lock it down now. Because it’s going to cost a lot more later.

            “There’s going to be so much demand for time that rates are being driven up and are being driven up for everybody,” said Kathy Neukirchen, president of Media Plus+, an ad-buying firm in Seattle. “I haven’t placed an initiative buy yet, which is where this is probably going to come, so I haven’t seen how much rates are going to go up. But the stations can charge whatever they want, and there’s only so much time that can be bought.”

            A Limited Amount of Time

            It’s a matter of politics and the economy. Big, well-financed political campaigns are heading to the ballot at the same time that the economy is starting to recover. Or at least the car dealers are starting to buy advertising again. The higher the demand, the more that advertising costs.

            Six initiative campaigns are heading to the ballot this year, five of them backed by business groups and the sixth, an income-tax initiative, backed by a coalition of labor groups and well-heeled individual donors. To get to this point, each one of those campaigns already has spent, at a minimum, somewhere around $1 million. Some of them have enormous amounts of money behind them – the two competing initiatives to eliminate the state liquor stores among them. For each one of those campaigns there’s likely to be an opposition effort as well.

Add to that the race for U.S. Senate, where big spending is probable from Democrats and Republicans, and a few hot congressional races in Western Washington. And suddenly it looks like a very good time to be in the television advertising business – an extra Christmas season in the fall.

            Certainly ad rates are going to be higher this year than they were last, said Jim Rose, director of sales and marketing for KING-5 TV in Seattle. Last year was one of the worst for advertising in any medium, anytime in recent memory. 

            “I wouldn’t say rates are going to go through the roof,” Rose said. “But the demand for all advertising in general, not just political advertising, is going up, and that’s one of the reasons you’re seeing rate increases now.

“Obviously Patty Murray is on the air already, but we haven’t had a lot of activity with other politicians at this stage of the game. And so far there’s only been one initiative making a buy. Initiative 1107 has bought the month of October, more or less.

“It’s too early to say whether political spending is up or down versus last year, but one difference I see this political cycle versus the last is that they’re booking early this year. Usually the campaigns buy their time a few weeks ahead, but for an issue to book this early is pretty uncommon.”

            Murray Makes Big Ad Buy

            One of the interesting things about the television ad business is that the rules make it possible to learn things the campaigns like to keep to keep close to their chests. For instance, the Patty Murray campaign told the Associated Press Tuesday that it would not reveal how much it was spending on its first big ad blast against Republican Dino Rossi. And when called by Washington State Wire to inquire about the big ad buy through the general election, a campaign spokesperson said she’d check and call back, and then didn’t.

            But the ad buying, at least on broadcast TV stations, is a matter of public record. It is disclosed in TV stations’ “public files,” which are open for public inspection at every station office. Ad buyers watch the spending closely – it’s their job to monitor demand for advertising and advise clients when to make their buys.

            Neukirchen’s firm has been paying careful attention. Murray’s campaign has purchased $2 million of broadcast TV time in Washington state, she said. About $550,000 of that is for this month’s primary, and the remainder for the general election. About $1.5 million in advertising time was purchased in the Seattle market, and the remainder in markets around the state. The actual spending by Murray is certainly higher – the figures don’t include ad purchases in the Portland media market, nor do they include cable-television ad buying.

            Meanwhile, the big ad buy by the I-1107 campaign is well known in media circles, but figures for that are not yet available. The campaigns have been buying non-pre-emptible time – which means that when the other campaigns come knocking at the door, their ads won’t be bumped.

            Initiatives Pay Full Ticket

            Just like the Murray campaign, the I-1107 campaign isn’t saying how much it spent, either. “I’m not going to share anything from our playbook, just like Pete Carroll would probably not share anything from the Seahawks playbook,” said Kathryn Stenger, spokesperson for the campaign. “What I can tell you is that we’re going to be working very hard between now and election day to get our message out to voters that supporting ‘Yes on 1107’ will be telling Olympia that we don’t want government in our grocery carts.”

            However much it spent, I-1107 certainly paid the full freight. Unlike political candidates, ballot-measure campaigns don’t get the “lowest unit rate” break on rates that are extended to political candidates. Federal law says that political candidates purchasing advertising on a broadcast TV station are entitled to the lowest rate extended to any customer. That’s a complicated calculation that basically means a political candidate pays the same as the heaviest-advertised car dealer or furniture store. But if supply is tight and demand increases, even the most-discounted rates go up – and so the candidates pay more, just like everybody else.

            Political campaigns also are entitled to equal time and equal rates as their opponents, explained Mark Allen, president and CEO of the Washington State Association of Broadcasters.

What it means is Dino Rossi – presuming he wins the Republican Senate primary – will get the same low rates Patty Murray got by buying early. But candidates in other races who buy later won’t get the same break.

And the longer all those initiative campaigns wait to buy their ads, the more they’re going to pay – another factor that appears likely to make this one of the biggest-spending campaign seasons the state has seen.