Why Republican presidential campaigns will buy way more TV ads than Facebook ones

There's already a premium on television ad time in early primary states. Earlier in July, WMUR in New Hampshire made headlines when it held off on reserving time for the presidential campaign of Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), knowing that as more slots sold, the price for each would increase. So why didn't Sen Rubio just turn around pour his money into, say, Facebook? After all, in her always-fascinating annual look at media trends, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers' Mary Meeker notes that there are big gaps between where people spend their time and where advertisers buy ads. Advertisers reserve a lot more of their budgets for print than do consumers (God bless them); consumers spend way more time on mobile devices than advertisers spend money.

The answer? Voters don't look like the population at large. If you compare turnout in the 2012 Iowa caucuses to where people spend their time on a weekly basis (as compiled quarterly by Nielsen), you can see that the older people are, the more time they spend watching TV. And the more likely they were to come out and vote three years ago. So ad money from candidates goes to TV. You fish where the fish are.