In a world of media and advertising overload, political campaigns have seen an astronomical increase in online advertising. But is there an issue with candidates advertising on news sites such as CNN and MSNBC? One might ask why they are doing so and whether doing so violates some sort of code.

“The candidates aren’t violating any ethics code. More power to them if they can find a media outlet that agrees with their politics with little risk of doing an investigative feature on them,” wrote Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, in an e-mail. “The real ethics issue concerns whether the news outlet is posting a biased report and drawing candidates with similar beliefs to a target audience that has been segmented attitudinally so that there is little risk.”

Money spent in advertising on these sites and political blogs reached an all-time high in the first quarter, with the biggest spender being presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who topped out at $37,981. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., came in third with $23,277 and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., came in at fourth with $12,306, according to The Washington Post.

Obama’s campaign has moved onto Google as an advertising platform, spending more than $72,000 on Google search ads in the first quarter, according to moneyline.cq.com. In comparison, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani spent almost $7,000 on Google ads during that period.

Dirk Deam, senior lecturer of political science, said he believes online advertising is much more than advertising. “Candidates take advantage of the dominant medium – meaning the Internet,” Deam said. “It’s advertising for advertising.”

The reason the candidates are advertising online is because it allows the candidates’ campaigns to keep track of the effect the ads have. Candidates are finding both exposure and new campaign fundraising opportunities on the Internet.

Campaigns are following the same pattern with online advertising as they have in the past, using traditional media: Begin by targeting the most active members of the party’s base and shift, later, to more general ads targeting the broader electorate.

According to TNS Media Intelligence, a political advertising tracking firm, one week of blog ads on 102 conservative blogs costs just $7,500; a single week of advertising on 121 liberal blogs costs approximately $24,000. Advertising for the same amount of time with traditional media can cost anywhere from $90,000 to $110,000.

Online advertising through blogs, however, has brought in approximately $22 million to date, so it makes sense that candidates would choose to spend their advertising dollars on Web sites that follow their political platform.

However, does that mean the campaign won’t spend money to advertise on a site unless there is a very compelling reason to do so?

“With the Internet, it is relatively more difficult for candidates to focus on local distinctions in the ads,” Deam said.