According to a new release from Borrell Associates, real estate agents, who initially tried to appease home sellers by advertising more on traditional channels, this year cut their print budgets and pushed more money into the Web. Total ad spending on real estate has declined 3 percent this year, while spending on the online segment has grown 25.8 percent, hitting $2.6 billion. Borrell projects online real estate advertising to grow at 12.4 percent next year while total real estate advertising continues to compress. In three years, says the report, agents and brokers will be spending more ad dollars with online media than with the newspaper.

Two million adjustable- rate mortgages are due to be re-priced over the next 24 months and as many as 25 percent of these might go into default as a result, consistent with a report published last year by the Census Bureau showing that homeownership fell for the fourth consecutive quarter. From a peak of 69.3 percent of households in 2004, now only 68.1 percent of households own their own home.

After average annual increases of approximately 9 percent in total real estate advertising between 2001 and 2005, the market essentially flat-lined in 2006 and fell by 3.3 percent in 2007. This trend will continue for at least the next two years.

For newspapers, the situation is worse. The study projects that coming off 2006's high of almost $5.2 billion in print advertising, there will be a 6.8 percent decline in 2007, almost the same again in 2008, followed by a 16 percent fall in 2009 and 13 percent in 2010. By then real estate marketers will be spending more on online media than on newspapers or local homes magazines.

"Branding" campaign

 We are currently witnessing one of the biggest and most expensive "branding" campaigns ever run. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on television to convince us that either Barack Obama or John McCain is the perfect man to lead the United States in the future. This all started forty years ago and is outlined in Joe McGinniss's book "The Selling of a President 1968".  Mr. McGinniss was recently asked about the current race...what has changed and what hasn't.

In 1968, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey were among the first to hire advertising agencies to package them and sell them to the American public. Raymond Price was Nixon's image advisor and he stated in an internal memo, "the response is to the image, not the man ...it's not what's there that counts, it's what's projected". The selection of a president, he added, "has to be an act of faith....this faith isn't achieved by reason; it's achieved by charisma, by a feeling of trust that can't be argued or reasoned".

The campaigns will spend about $3 billion this year. Although the internet has become a huge force, Lehman Bros. predicts that only $110 million or 5% of the total will be spent on the internet. The huge majority will be spent on network and spot television, still the dominating medium.

The internet must not be overlooked, however. Most candidates have a presence on Facebook or MySpace. For the first time, there may be signs that, especially among young voters, that the internet may be replacing television as the primary source of information about the candidates. For example, a poll conducted in New Hampshire by the NY ad agency SS&K and Advertising Age found that, in the days leading up to that state's primary, more voters under 30 visited the home pages of the candidates (52%) than watched their television advertising (43%).

In the early years there was little attention paid to specific markets. In 2004, databases began to be introduced to enable tailoring of political messaging to subgroups. This is a much cheaper way to reach key groups of voters than those placed on national TV. Thus, the 2008 candidates have a more cost-efficient means of reaching the voters most likely to make the most difference.

In or near Dayton. Ohio, for example, whatever TV station you watch, you are likely to be inundated with commercials for the Presidential candidates. The reason? Clark County, served by Dayton TV, is considered by both parties to be a vital swing county in the vital swing state of Ohio.

In Boston, on the other hand, you will have to rely on newscasts, websites and newspapers even to be aware that a Presidential election is taking place. Neither party is showering ad dollars on Boston stations, because both agree it's a foregone conclusion that Massachusetts will vote Democratic.