With the end of the 2012 election season, so too comes the conclusion of a seemingly infinite number of campaign advertisements. Of course, there is a finite number of political ads that ran this cycle and we at Ad Hawk have placed that figure at more than 4,000. That number is based on our work gathering and identifying the ads in order to help the public learn more about the sources of funding behind them.

The Ad Hawk project collected and indexed advertisements released by campaigns in order to inform voters about the ads’ sponsors and funding sources. As a result, we have amassed a comprehensive and searchable database of this year's presidential, congressional and third-party advertisements focused on federal issues and candidates.

Every day, Ad Hawk scans more than 300 of public feeds associated with campaigns and committees. Each time one of those organizations posts a new video, we determine if it is an ad, and if so, we mark it in our database. So far, we’ve considered nearly 8,000 videos, marking more than half as ads. As the election approaches, we’ve found that organizations are releasing ads at an accelerating rate. It’s enough to keep us from turning on the television in our free time.

We knew we were collecting a lot, but one question still nagged at us: were we collecting enough? It's difficult to estimate how extensive our coverage is, since there is no publicly available record of the advertisements that are published during a campaign season. We have noticed, however, that the Ad Hawk system's collection rate seems to be consistent with the recent explosion in outside spending in the push before election day.

Using an environment for statistical computing called “R,” we performed a cross-correlation (R's ccf() function) of ads released and outside spending to find out exactly how well the correlate. We also checked to see if there is a lag between spending and ad releases, to account for the possibility that ads come out days after funds are spent. As it turned out, though, spending and ad releases had nearly no lag difference.

This seems to support the notion that money spent by outside groups is immediately seen in the form of new messages being pushed to the public. This, we believe, demonstrates the importance of projects like Ad Hawk and Political Ad Sleuth, which try to show the money trail between advertisements and the people, organizations, and interests behind them. All the more reason, we would argue, for the FCC to require records of advertising contracts signed between media outlets and committees immediately available to the public online and in machine readable format.

Data and R scripts here

Today, Sunlight and Free Press are proud to launch Political Ad Sleuth, a new project dedicated to collecting and posting online the information available in the political files of broadcast stations across the country. These files detail the name of the buyer, cost, air times and duration of political ads.

Until this year, these records have been kept on paper at stations’ main studios, where they were required to be available for any member of the public who wanted to inspect them. With public pressure by Sunlight and other groups, the Federal Communications Commission now requires some of them to be placed online, but they still aren’t easy to search. Until now.

With Political Ad Sleuth, you can view, search and sort the latest information on political ads purchased at television stations based on state, individual television market and even by a specific station. The information is gathered from the FCC’s database as well as submitted by journalists and volunteers who visit the stations not yet required to post their files online and upload copies of those files to the site. While Political Ad Sleuth is the most comprehensive tool available to research the influence behind these ads, the information is still not complete and we need your help!

Here’s what you can do:

• Create an account on Political Ad Sleuth
• Search for a candidate or committee to see if there are files that “need entry” (Want to see who’s spending for Romney? Obama?)
• Enter data from the PDFs
• Find your local television station not required by the FCC to post their files online (You can search for your state )
• Visit your station and inspect the political files and upload to Political Ad Sleuth

Our Reporting group is already using Political Ad Sleuth in their stories and analysis.  With your help, we can uncover the influence behind our elections.

Political Ad Sleuth is a collaborative project by Sunlight Foundation and Free Press. For more information you can contact us at outreach@politicaladsleuth.com

So determined are Republican members of Congress to kowtow to the broadcast industry that today members of a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to strip the Federal Communications Commission of its ability to post online information that is already supposed to be public about who is paying for campaign ads.

In April the FCC adopted rules requiring the top four broadcasters in the biggest fifty media markets to put their “political files” online. The political file includes information about individuals and groups that purchase political ads on the station. This ruling was an important step for transparency because it meant that instead of having to dig through a file cabinet in a local broadcaster’s office, anyone interested in learning who was paying for a political ad could access that information by going to the FCC's website.

The National Association of Broadcasters have been fighting this transparency measure from its inception, preferring to keep secret information about where an expected $3 billion in political ad revenue is coming from. The FCC, in adopting the disclosure rules, stood up to the powerful broadcast lobby. Republican Members of the Appropriations subcommittee, not so much.

The appropriations bill will have to be marked up by the full committee before moving on to the House floor. Advocates, including the Sunlight Foundation and Free Press hope efforts by committee Democrats to strip the offending provisions from the bill are successful. House Republicans should not be able to blithely disregard Americans’ right to know who is paying for their elections.

For most Americans, the incessant barrage of political ads on TV are still a few months away. But in Wisconsin, the electioneering is well underway with exorbitant fundraising spent on political ads in the recall election of Governor Scott Walker scheduled for next Tuesday.

In the post-Citizens United era of unlimited fundraising (and spending) by super PACs, the elections in Wisconsin are just a preview of what is to come this fall. While much of this ‘dark money’ is hidden from detection by the Federal Election Commission there is a one place where they have to leave a paper trail: at the TV stations where they buy their political ads. For the first time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ruled to require television stations in the top 50 media markets to put their public and political files online. These files contain information on political ad spending which are crucial to the public interest, and provide a glimpse into who is trying to influence our vote.

Not surprisingly, the broadcasters have filed a lawsuit against the disclosure requirement. Even if the broadcasters are forced to comply with the ruling, the top 50 media markets still only cover a fraction of the swing states where the majority of political ad spending will occur.

That is why Sunlight Foundation is working with Free Press, New America Foundation and other coalition members to recruit volunteers, journalists and allies across the country to inspect political files at TV stations and post our findings online. With the national attention (and fundraising dollars) focused on Wisconsin, we are starting here to shine light on political ad spending by unlocking the political files at the broadcast stations. But we need your help!

Sign up to become a political ad sleuth and we will send you all the information you need to inspect the files at your local station.

At its meeting today, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a rule requiring the top four broadcasters in the biggest fifty media markets to make their “political files” public. The political file includes information about individuals and groups that purchase political ads on the station. In this era of Super PACs and dark money groups flooding the airwaves with ads, the political files could contain important information allowing reporters and voters to better follow the money behind this year’s campaigns. The political file is supposed to be public, but, before now, “public” has meant paper documents buried in some file cabinet in a broadcaster’s office. By requiring the information to be put online on the FCC website, this ruling takes the political files out of the dark ages and recognizes that public means online.

We are hopeful that the ruling marks an exciting opening salvo in the fight for broadcaster transparency and is not the end of the story. For while the ruling puts information about political ad buys online for the first time, the coverage is incomplete. As our reporting group pointed out, 160 media markets will be exempt from making their information public this election year. Those missing markets include some key presidential battleground states, as well as states and districts with close congressional campaigns. Moreover, by limiting the coverage to ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, the ruling omits coverage for political advertising on Spanish language television that could be especially important this year. Coverage should expand in 2014, when the FCC has said all stations must be prepared to put their political files on line.

When we submitted comments to the FCC on this issue, we urged the commission to ensure that the information from the political files be put online in a searchable, sortable format. Unfortunately, the FCC did not heed this important recommendation. It will allow broadcasters to file images of their political file, making the information much less useful than if it were readily able to be parsed and analyzed.

Despite the shortcomings of the new rule, the FCC should be applauded for not bowing down to broadcaster demands that the agency adopt a bifurcated system where the only information available online would have been redacted and aggregated. We hope they show the same strength a year from now, when the commission hears from the broadcasters on whether the rule is burdensome or anticompetitive.

Television broadcasters will make billions from political ad sales this year. They will undoubtedly use some of that cash to lobby to push back on the rules the FCC adopted today. Transparency advocates should push just as hard to ensure that all broadcasters in all media markets, regardless of size, post their complete political files in a searchable format. Time will tell whether this ruling is the start of something big, or if it’s just enough to take the issue off the table.