It has passed half of election campaign and we can analyse first results of parties' advertising campaign in mass media. Market price of this campaign is more than 2 million dollars. Leader and outsiders of this process can be defined. There are also some visible trends.

It will be important to determine some important moments before the release of information:

• Monitoring data is a market price of advertisement, supporting political parties/blocs, this data is got by company "Monitoring of Ukrainian mass media" according to price-lists of media, released before election campaign;
• Advertisement was divided into two main parts:

• Direct political advertisement (advertisement, given in special "political" blocs, and advertisement, which is not included in such blocs, but directly support political entities);
• Social-political advertisement (social advertisement, supporting parties, and advertisement, having only particular citing on some parties, but aimed to support them);

• Data is given in USD;
• Analysis is based on period:

• 9.02.2002 - 3.03.2002 - central media;
• 9.02.2002 - 24.02.2002 - regional media.

Let's switch to the results. Market price of advertisement, supporting parties/blocs during defined period is 2 279 364 USD. Only allocation between kinds of advertisement is almost equal. Cost of direct political advertisement is 1 045 591 USD (45,9% of total), social advertisement was estimated in 1 233 733 USD(54,1%).

On the other hand, price of TV-advertisement is 2 206 437 USD. It's 96,8% of total cost. The role of press and radio is not significant.. Cost of advertisement in press - 62 627 USD (2,7%), in radio even less - 10 300 USD (0,5%).

Regional allocation is also disproportional. We do not include in this report regional data for period from 25^th of February to 3^rd of March. But even analysis of first two weeks' data shows advantage of central mass media. Price correlation during this period: 1 785 880 USD in central media versus 30 215 USD in monitored media of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Lviv, Simferopol and Zaporizha together. Actually 96% of advertising cost of first two weeks belong to central TV channels. At last, time allocation of advertisement: first week -

1 012 672 USD (44,4%), second - 803 423 USD (35,2%), third - 463 269 USD (20,3%). After initial advertising "boom" parties started to use other PR methods. Probably, this trend will change closer to the elections.

Now let's analyse cost allocation between parties. At first, direct political advertisement. First six entities are shown in table 1.

Table 1

Market price of direct political advertisement

Cost of their advertisement are more than 100 000 USD (for every entity). Together their advertisement price is 802 771 USD (79% of total). Again we come across distortion. Altogether in monitored mass media appeared advertisement of 30 parties and blocs.. Four entities, including "Bloc Natalii Vitrenko" didn't release any advertisement. As it was said, six parties spent more than 100 000 USD, another five - from 10 000 to 100 000.

Situation with social-political advertisement is rather different (table 2).

Table 2

Market price of social-political advertisement

Only five parties use such kind of advertisement. One of them - SDPU (u) is a leader in alienation. Market price of their social advertisement is 1 073 492 USD (86% of total). Green Party takes the second place, it has a very differentiated system of advertising clips.

At last, we'll summarize information. Top-ten of entities for the direct and social advertisement is given in table 3.

Table 3

Total market price of advertisement

Column % - MAX shows comparison of mass media campaign and total election funds, limited by law (2 550 000 UAH or 480 000 USD). As we can see, cost of SDPU (u) advertisement is in 2,25 times more than defined by law maximum of election funds. SDPU (u)'s advertisement market price aggregate almost half of all parties and blocs expenditures (47%). The other parties don't exceed the limit, Only Green Party is close to 50% of total funds maximum.

First seven parties accumulated 90% of advertising cost, top-ten - 95,6%. It means, that the other twenty entities account only 4,4% of cost, or 99 395 USD. Leaders of advertisement campaign use not only direct, but also social advertisement.

Main outcomes of monitoring:

- disproportional allocation of advertising cost (territorial, between parties and kinds of mass media);