From Salon.com:

Psst! You with your checkbook in one hand and a political fundraising letter in the other. Are you sure you’re being shrewd instead of being screwed when you send your money to this particular campaign? … Would you feel ripped off if you discovered that about 15 percent of everything you donate goes right into the pockets of the media-consulting firm?

What we are talking about is one of the biggest secrets in politics, right up there with debate briefing books and sealed divorce decrees. In this fate-of-the-nation political year when more than $1 billion will be given to Senate and House candidates, there is just one certainty about the outcome — the true winners in November will be the leading media consultants in both parties.

For more than a quarter-century, media consultants have been paid not in fixed dollar terms, but as a percentage of the campaign’s television buy. The more often a candidate goes on television, the more the media consultant makes, even though the actual cookie-cutter commercials may have all the originality of a Harvard undergraduate’s coming-of-age novel. Small wonder that in virtually every free-spending political race in both parties, the campaign manager (who is paid a salary, which is publicly disclosed) and the pollster (who is usually compensated by a flat rate per poll) start gazing enviously at the media consultant as they conclude, “We’re in the wrong business.”

Yeah, us too.