Considering the number of people who will be watching the bowl game, compared to the number of people who are listening to the talk radio shows that are airing the commercial, the numbers are greatly in favor during the bowl game.
Its not just "how many" its "who" is watching.
One could write a thesis on advertising, but to try to briefly explain:
With any advertising, cost vs response rate. How much do you have to spend to get X response (response being whatever action you want from your targeted audience) (signing a petition, buying a product, calling a legislator) there are thousands of responses.
First, an in-state audience is what we are seeking.
We (WCI and the USCCA) can spend hundreds of thousands on a commercial but if it isn't hitting the "in-state" audience, its a waste of money.
It wouldn't make sense to do a national commercial on an in-state issue.
Would you hit a lot of people. yes. would your cost vs response rate ratio be good. No.
IF we thought the viewing audience of the Rose Bowl was the best demographic we'd be purchasing a tv ad on a local station which wouldn't hit the whole state anyway.(with national programming some of the ad time/space is used by the network, some by the local affiliate, at least with the major networks and affiliates, you either go national or local there is no station that can broadcast to the entire state)
The national network space is MONSTER expensive and we'd be spending hundreds of thousands to advertise to people, many of whom would be in other states. They can't help us, they are not our targeted audience. True, many people from WI would be watching, but the cost per response would be very high.
In addition, those viewing are not necessarily inclined to support our position. There IS a danger in advertising to the WRONG audience is you could draw THEM to action if they oppose your position.
The demographics of people likely to support our position STRONGLY reveal that targeted radio advertising on shows like Mark Behling, Vicki McKenna is one of the most effective mediums for our commercial. It is by far the most "bang for the buck". We need to consider 2 variables. A - the most people and B- the most likely to actively support constitutional carry
That is not to say radio is the ONLY medium we will use. We will evaluate our available funds and consider every medium that makes sense, ie has the best cost vs response rate ratio.
Comparing cost to effectiveness, if we do decide to run this on TV, we would likely choose targeted shows. ONE example might be in-state fishing shows. They may only have an audience of 20,000 people, but the demographics of the vast majority of those 20,000 would be VERY likely to support our position (response rate)
If it costs $5,000 to get your ad shown to 20,000 (a cost of 25 cents per impression) (an impression is a viewing) people and 75% (15,000) of them respond your cost per response was 33 cents.
If you spend $100,000 to run an ad that gets shown to 400,000 people, (same cost of 25 cents per impression) but that audience is not as supportive of your cause (they are not gun owners, they are liberal, they are too young to vote, or a number of other reasons) as a whole and only 10% respond (30,000) you reached the same number of people but your cost per response was $3.33
Of course these are all estimates, you never know what response rate you really will get, but the money is out the door either way. Many companies over years of advertising spend and analyze data to see what gets them the best response rate. In our situation, we do not have our own data to rely on, so the best we can do is make very educated guesses based on our analysis, (we do have experiential/observational data about our members, the Wisconsin voting population, etc etc) professional experiences and also considering how organizations seeking a similar demographic audience advertise, the response rates they get (cost v response rate) and analyze our objectives.
