Politics is big business when you're in advertising, but only a small fraction of the expected $3 billion campaigns will spend this year will go to internet advertisers, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with WSJ, Evan Tracey, founder and COO of Campaign Media Analysis, part of TNS Media Intelligence, said politicians in 2008 will continue to turn to traditional media to bring their message to voters.

"You will see record spending on internet advertising in this cycle, but it will still amount to little more than a rounding error when put next to the money spent on television," Tracy told the paper. "Right now, the campaigns are using the free part of the internet -- things like email, blogs, YouTube and MySpace -- to fundraise and take advantage of grass-roots organizing, but [they're] not doing much from a paid standpoint."

Tracey cited two reasons why the web will lag behind TV for political ad dollars in the upcoming election. Talking about the Mitt Romney campaign, Tracey pointed out that the candidate's use of an ad network had put his message on an inappropriate site. In that instance, an ad distributed by Advertising.com had landed Romney's message on Gay.com. Romney, a contender for the Republican nomination, is a Mormon.

But setting aside the problem of ad networks, Tracey said the web also fails to deliver an audience that may prefer not to listen at all.

"An internet ad is not a TV ad," Tracey said. "It is not going to be something that you can put an unfiltered 30-second message, or an attack ad when you need to do those because with an internet ad at this point, somebody has to want to see it."