That amounts to an average of 763 ads a day

As the presidential horse race has tightened in Wisconsin, the ad war has escalated.

In the first three weeks of October, the campaigns of President BarackObama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and their supporters unleashed 16,034 ads in the state's five major markets — Green Bay, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee and Wausau — according to data released by the Wesleyan Media Project.

That amounts to an average of 763 ads a day, which works out to roughly 32 ads an hour. The October total is a 37.5 percent increase over the preceding three-week period during which the campaigns aired 11,655 ads.