General Election Ads

"A record pulverizing year for political advertising..." Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director, Wesleyan Media Project
According to the Smart Media Group (>), "Over $980 million was spent on television and radio advertising during the 2012 Presidential General Election."  This included $335 million by the Obama campaign, $213 million by the Romney campaign, and $434 million by super PACs and issue groups.  The Wesleyan Media Project reported on Nov. 2, 2012 that, "As of October 29, the two candidates, their party committees, and supporting interest groups had sponsored 1,015,615 ads since June 1."  Their figures showed that from April 11 to Oct. 29  the Obama campaign ran 503,255 spots at an estimated cost of $266.0 million and the Romney campaign ran 190,784 spots at an estimated cost of $105.4 million (spending by outside interest groups brought the two sides to rough parity).  If you lived in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia or Wisconsin, chances are you saw a lot of presidential campaign ads (CO and VA example).  In most other states, however, you may not have seen any of these ads.  The majority of the ads were negative and the overall tone of the ad campaign was quite dispiriting.  From September on, one or the other of the campaigns released a new ad just about every day. 

See also: Primary Ads  |  Interest Group Ads.

With assistance from Mike Dec, 4president.org.

See also:
Wesleyan Media Project
The Washington Post. "Mad Money: Tracking TV campaign ads  in the 2012 presidential campaign."
ElectAd
Stanford University Political Communication Lab
Vanderbilt/YouGov Ad Rating Project (+)
Sunlight Foundation: Ad Hawk (+)  |  Political Ad Sleuth
TVB.  2013.  "Drum roll: The biggest media impact maker on the 2012 Presidential election was... Local market broadcast television. (again!)"   [PDF]
FCC: TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files (from Aug. 2, 2012, top 50 television markets)