• Ad Age, Monday, November 1, 2010 11:26 PM

Remember 2008? The battle for the presidency was waged via Facebook and the campaigns battled over Google search terms. This was supposed to be the future of political advertising.Trouble is, that future hasn't come to pass. Karl Rove isn't going around pitching for money saying, "We have to buy more banner ads." And George Soros wasn't screaming, "Here's another million, buy more search terms!"

In 2010, TV is back and it's bigger than ever. The economy pushed ad expenditures down across the board in 2010. Except political ad expenditures. The last election cycle set a political ad-spending record of $2.8 billion and 2010 is expected to shatter that mark with more than $4 billion in ad expenditures. Two-thirds of that money went to TV. To be fair, other media has enjoyed higher political expenditures -- including online. In fact, online spending doubled to just less than $45 million. Or less than the cost to run one major U.S. Senate race.

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