A Strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction

that’s being spent increases.” Wheel’s desirability helps it command a considerable premium. In October 2014, amid the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Arkansas between Republican Tom Cotton and incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor, KATV-TV in Little Rock pushed prices for 30-second ads during Wheel to $50,000, from $1,250 in July, according to records filed with the Federal Communications Commission. National ads were going for about $95,000 at the time, says Will Feltus, whose company, National Media, managed ad strategies for George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign. “What planet are we on?” Feltus says he remembers thinking that year. “But the reason they’re charging $50,000 is because people are paying.”

In 2012, President Obama’s reelection campaign pioneered the use of data to redirect ad spending away from expensive slots on shows like Wheel to cheaper airtime that reached specific subgroups of voters. (Often, the answer was late-night and cable-access TV.) Since then, analytics-driven ad buys have become a presidential campaign staple, but Wheel remains popular. Placing ads there can produce variable results, says David Seawright, director of analytics and product innovation for Republican consulting firm Deep Root Analytics. He says Wheel does especially well with older swing voters, persuadable female voters, and young swing voters in northeast Tennessee, but in Springfield, Mo., it tends to attract blue-collar male voters. “You cannot just make a blanket statement and say Wheel of Fortune is a good place to place political ads,” says Seawright. “It’s going to depend upon where you’re running and who you’re trying to talk to.”

Deep Root worked this year for the super PAC Right to Rise USA, which spent about $73 million on TV ads for Jeb Bush before he quit the race in February—20 percent of the more than $370 million that’s been poured into presidential campaign ads so far this year. CMAG estimates the total for all political advertising will reach $4.4 billion by November. “The super PACs act as this multiplying force,” says Elizabeth Wilner, Kantar Media senior

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Jeopardy! vice president. “Anything that continues to get the reliable audiences just becomes more and more expensive, because there are more and more noncandidate advertisers out there willing to bid up the prices for that kind of programming.” The bottom line is likely to capture more of the estimated $4.4 billion spent on political ads this election than any other show.

Wheel of Fortune

A patent battle between Fitbit and Jawbone could result in U.S. bans Last year, Jawbone sued Fitbit, the leader in the fitness-tracker market, over claims that Fitbit had hired away Jawbone employees who took sensitive information with them. The lawsuit was filed in California state court as Fitbit was preparing for its

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