Romney leads in ads; Dems in fight for web dominance

The Nielsen Company, the media tracking outfit, is out with some revealing figures today showing who among the presidential candidates is leading in TV and radio advertising, website traffic, and blog buzz. Here are some choice nuggets:

• Mitt Romney is by far the TV and radio advertising leader in either party, having run more than the second- and third-place candidates, Bill Richardson and Barack Obama, combined. Romney has run 10,893 spots as of last Wednesday, compared with Richardson's 5,975 and Obama's 4,293.
  
• Richardson and Obama have run the vast majority of their ads in Iowa, while Hillary Clinton, who has run 2,192 political spots so far, has spread hers around to several other states. Polls suggest at this point that Richardson and Obama both need a win in Iowa more than Clinton does. (71 percent of the total ads so far this cycle have been placed in Iowa.)
  
• On the Republican side, no one even comes close to Romney. Rudy Giuliani has aired 642 ads, but all of them on radio.
  
• Clinton and Obama have been duking it out for the top spot in terms of visits to their websites. Clinton edged Obama in August -- hillaryclinton.com drew 759,000 unique visitors, while barackobama.com drew 749,000. But Obama's website drew more than three times as many overall views, suggesting that his supporters are spending more time on their candidate's site than Clinton's are.
  
• John McCain's money problems this year have been well-documented, but he has by far purchased the most online ads of any candidate this year.