Studies of sham issue ads in elections have dominated discussion of issue advocacy over the past few years. The Annenberg study is a welcome change of focus to look at the impact of "pure" issue ads in the legislative arena. The study focused on both print and broadcast media in the Washington, DC, area, and looked at air time or newspaper space cost only, excluding the cost of production.

During the 108th Congress, $404.4 million was spent on 67,653 print and television ads by 914 groups. The top 1 percent of groups spent 57 percent of the overall total. Corporate interests spent 79 percent of the total, while spending by citizen groups represented only 14 percent. The remainder was spent by groups with "ambiguous or potentially misleading names."

The top three issues were the economy, health care and energy/environment, which accounted for 59 percent of overall spending. Half of the issues identified had ads on only one side of the issue. Where spending did occur on both sides it was uneven, with only 6 percent having competitive spending levels.