Obama's 50-state ad buy

Ad Age:

It's official. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will be among the TV sponsors of NBC Universal's Olympics coverage. In the first significant network-TV buy of any presidential candidate in at least 16 years, the Obama campaign has taken a $5 million package of Olympics spots that includes network TV as well as cable ads.

The last time a presidential campaign bought a national ad was 1996, with a single minute-long ad by Bob Dole. In short, in today's micro-segmented world, where you can geo-target your ads to swing areas of swing states, as well, as use cable to further refine those ads to hyper-specific demographics, this kind of buy would seem to be a thing of the past.

But for at least the duration of the Olympics, the whole nation will be exposed to the Obama campaign.