The cost of political warfare

Want to know how much money is being spent on that annoying candidate ad? Wesleyan University has a database for that:

Transparency and government responsiveness depend critically on real-time publicly available information disclosing efforts to influence elections. The Wesleyan Media Project tracks and analyzes all broadcast advertisements aired by or on behalf of federal and state election candidates in every media market in the country. Throughout the course of the 2010 election cycle, we will provide real-time information on the extent of corporate and union spending in federal election campaigns across the country, who specifically is doing that spending and which candidates are benefiting.