Marco Rubio on Thursday made a slight alteration to his television advertising strategy in Iowa but has not reduced his investment in the state.
The Florida senator’s presidential campaign told the Washington Examiner that it was converting long ago purchased 60-second television advertising spots to 30-second spots. The move was made to enable Rubio to better respond to the millions of dollars in negative ads targeting Rubio on Iowa television, courtesy of multiple GOP opponents and their supportive super PACs. The result is that Rubio is spending less money per ad, since 30 seconds generally costs less than one minute.
Rubio senior advisor Todd Harris said that the campaign has not shifted resources to other states or reduced its commitment to woo Iowa Republicans ahead of the Feb. 1 caucuses. “If you go back and look, every week we’ve made adjustments,” he said during a brief telephone interview.
The re-orientation in ad buys, first reported by Politico, resulted in an overall net savings of $500,000 to the campaign. The senator’s opponents were heralding the move as proof that Rubio was faltering and scrambling to re-position himself. Harris dismissed those assertions as false and unsupported by the facts.
