Yesterday, when speaking with the White House press, President Obama was asked about the now infamous pro-Obama super PAC ad that links Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with a female victim of cancer. Obama tried to play down the significance of the ad by saying "it ran once."

"I don't think that Governor Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad," said Obama. "But keep in mind this is an ad that I didn’t approve, I did not produce, and as far as I can tell, has barely run. I think it ran once."

But while it may have only run once on television, according to a senior Republican media strategist, the Obama super PAC has paid at least $169,047 to promote the YouTube video of the ad online.

"YouTube has a video analytics tool that allows you to determine the number of views per video through advertising," the media strategist explains. "If you have the number of views that a video has obtained through advertising, the only question is how much they paid. Cellar is $0.35 per view and ceiling is around a dollar $1.00 per view. Therefore, the cost estimate we have developed per view is really very conservative because we went with $0.35 per view."

The media strategist offers this chart:

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In other words, Obama's super PAC likely paid at least $41,291 the day before President Obama tried to minimize the effort behind the ad in comments to the press.