The Monkey Shack

One of the most important jobs at an ad agency is trafficking, which essentially is the process of making sure the right ads are running in the right places at the right times. When I used to work at Y&R in New York City, I sat next to our traffickers who were constantly on the phone tallying to the different TV networks, telling them when to start and when to stop airing certain commercials for our clients.

Apparently when John McCain suspended his campaign last week so he could return to Washington DC to participate in negotiations about the economic bailout plan, that meant suspending the work of his campaign's online ad trafficker.

On Friday morning, before the first presidential debate took place later that evening, before McCain even announced he was going to participate, an online ad appeared on the Wall Street Journal announcing McCain had already won the debate. (See the ad here) Another ad apparently was posted elsewhere featuring a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: "McCain won the debate-- hands down."