Though online spending by political advertisers is up from the levels of the 2004 national election, the portion going to online ad placements is actually down.

A report by research firm PQ Media on political media spending claims that email accounts for 80 percent of the $40 million spent online by political advertisers leading up to this year's midterm elections, ClickZ reports. The shift can be explained by a need for candidates to focus more on geotargeting during the midterm, whereas during a national election advertisers can move more toward mainstream political websites.

"Is there more online advertising than there was in 2002? The answer is 'yes,' but compared to 2004 there is much less [online] advertising because it's missing that national component," said Dr. Leo Kivijarv, VP and head of research at PQ Media. Kivijarv adds that the ratio of email spending to online ad spending this season was around 4 to 1, whereas it was around to 2 to 1 in 2004.

AdRelevance reports that 29 political candidates and party organizations ran online ads the final week of October 2006. This group's advertising generated 4.8 million impressions, which is dwarfed by the number of ad impressions run by The RNC, DNC and Bush and Kerry campaigns in '04, tracked at nearly 42 million by the research firm.

While online ad buys are down for this election, most industry insiders, including Kivijarv, expect the sector to grow again in 2008 for the national election.