Gap Between Presidential Rivals Narrows In Online Display Ad Race

President Barack Obama has long gotten credit for being particularly online-savvy in his communications and fundraising efforts, and we’ve seen plenty of evidence of this in his race for re-election. But now, at least when it comes to online display advertising, the gap between Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, has narrowed, according to a new report from comScore.

In July, the Obama campaign pulled back its online advertising, running only 921 million ads during the month, while Romney doubled its previous months’s numbers by running 350 million impressions. While Obama’s online advertising impressions are still substantially greater than Romney’s, July marks the closest the two campaigns have ever been — which is especially interesting since Obama seems to be cutting back while Romney ramps up.

In the first five months of the year, ads for Obama outnumbered Romney’s ads by a factor of 20 to 60 times, as Obama delivered more than 800 million impressions a month. By June, the incumbent’s ads peaked at 1.2 billion impressions. Meanwhile, the Romney campaign began increasing its spend in June, delivering 174 million impressions.

ComScore’s Andrew Lipsman speculates that, with Romney’s war chest growing, we may see a true battle between the Presidential campaigns in the coming months pre-election.