MILWAUKEE, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- President Obama's campaign in Wisconsin has run more ads even though Republican challenger Mitt Romney has a bigger budget, experts say.
The Democrats have been taking advantage of favorable rates for candidates. The Super PACs like Crossroads GPS and Restore Our Future that have been paying for many of the Romney ads have to pay higher rates, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday.
Kantar Media CMAG, which tracks campaign ad spending, said the Romney campaign's ad budget is about 50 percent higher than Obama's.
"These groups represent a conscious outsourcing by Republicans of the single biggest undertaking and expense of any presidential campaign. It's a happy development for TV ad salespeople who can charge them higher rates, a not insignificant cost of doing business that the groups clearly have decided to eat," CMAG vice president Elizabeth Wilner wrote Thursday in an article in Ad Age. "Democrats have gone the other way: Obama's campaign has internalized most of the advertising responsibilities traditionally held by a national party committee and as a result, his ad dollars are stretching further, debunking the conventional wisdom that Republicans would swamp him with advertising."
Experts say the same pattern holds in many other battleground states.
The Republicans have also spent a lot of money on ads in smaller media markets in Wisconsin. The Democrats have focused on Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison, where about 75 percent of Wisconsin voters see them.
