McCain's Media Strategy on Women

Picking Sarah Palin as his running mate isn't the only tactic presidential hopeful John McCain is using to try and win female votes. He's also strategically placing his TV commercials to woo women, says Gregory Aston, director of competitive intelligence for media buying and planning agency MPG.

After analyzing June through September data supplied by research firm TNS Media Intelligence, Aston has concluded that McCain, as well as his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, concentrate their ads between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania; both advertised to a large swath of Americans during the Olympics; and both place about 50 percent of their ads during news-related programming.

McCain, though, is also targeting his advertising to a female audience. He's had a consistent presence on ABC Family, Discovery Health, Lifetime, Oxygen and TLC. Women make up 60 to 73 percent of the audience for these channels.

McCain also has a presence during soap operas, game shows, and talk shows that are broadcast during the day -- the most female-heavy part of the day for local TV stations. To be more specific, 14 percent of McCain's local TV time is spent during daytime hours, compared to 7 percent for Obama.

Obama, meanwhile, is simply trying to reach as many eyeballs as possible, Aston says. He focused his television ads on the Olympics and news channels like CNN. He's also using the Internet more than McCain is.

Could this be why McCain dissed late-night talk show host David Letterman for a chat with Katie Couric? Not necessarily. Couric's CBS Evening News audience over a recent two-week period has been about 60 percent female -- the same as Letterman's.

But Couric gets more viewers overall, and therefore lets McCain reach about 1.5 million more women, an analysis of Nielsen data from media agency Horizon Media.

by Willow Duttge

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