Visible Measures Blog

Obama's attack ad We've Heard It All Before rises to to the top of the WSJ Presidential Ads Chart this week, driving over 600,000 views with help from paid media. The ad highlights Romney's economic record while he was govenor in Massachusetts. It nearly tripled in views this week.

At second place is conservative super PAC American Future Fund's new attack ad, Fast and Furious. The spot attacks President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for Fast and Furious, the failed Mexican drug cartel operation. The campaign drove over 430,000 views this week, helped along by paid media. Fast and Furious is American Future Fund's second consecutive week with a campaign in the top five.

Romney also debuts two new ads, one of them capitalizing on the president's gaffe at a recent press conference, where he said that the private sector is "doing fine." Fine? steps in at third place with nearly 240,000 views. Romney's second ad, Jolt drove over 80,000 views, enough for tenth place. Thematically similar to Fine?, the ad uses news headlines to highlight the nation's troubled economy. 

Obama dominates the remainder of the chart with two new ads, grabbing fourth and sixth place, respectively. Mitt Romney: Out of Touch takes a humurous approach to show Mitt Romney's lack of connection to the American people by featuring a string of famous Romney quotes like "I like to to be able to fire people," and "I have some friends that are NASCAR team owners." It almost hits 200,000 views this week.

All in all, Obama maintains six spots on the chart, while Romney holds two, and Conservative super PACs have two. 

The Most-Watched Presidential Ads of the Week

Rank	Last Week's Rank	Brand	Campaign	Current Week's Views*	% Change in Views**	Watch
1	3	Barack Obama	We've Heard it All Before	607,729	289%
2	New	American Future Fund	Fast and Furious	434,498	NEW
3	New	Mitt Romney	Fine?	238,543	NEW
4	New	Barack Obama	Mitt Romney: Out of Touch	197,060	NEW
5	9	Barack Obama	Mitt Romney: Extreme on Women's Issues	149,683	103%
6	New	Barack Obama	Stephanie Cutter: Mitt Romney Blatantly Distorting the President's Record	147,768	NEW
7	Back on Chart	Barack Obama	Broken Promises	118,937	Back on Chart
8	8	Barack Obama	Stephanie Cutter: Get the facts	99,189	29%
9	7	Crossroads GPS	Stopwatch	82,633	8%
10	New	Mitt Romney	Jolt	81,784	NEW

Source: Visible Measures

Note: True Reach counts the combined performance of the original campaign clips uploaded by candidates and supporting groups like Super PACs as well as the copies and derivative videos uploaded by audiences. This analysis doesn’t include Visible Measures’ paid-placement performance data or video views on private sites.