Invoking Paris Hilton may not be in the Top 10 list of political maneuvers, but it certainly seems to have earned John McCain the kind of attention that Barack Obama's enjoyed for months.

The Arizona senator, in hammering the theme that his rival is an inflated celebrity unprepared to be commander in chief, has commanded media coverage over the past week.

It has triggered criticism that he's not taking his run for president seriously -- but at the same time national polls generally show McCain closing in on Obama since he returned from his high-profile trip overseas and mega-address to a crowd of 200,000 Berliners.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report this week that found for the first time since the general election campaign began in early June, McCain is pulling nearly as much media coverage as Obama.

"They clearly took the initiative with that ad, and they clearly created a buzz," said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the group.

The Pew report found that during the week of July 28-Aug. 3, McCain was a "significant or dominant factor" in 78 percent of campaign stories, compared with 81 percent for Obama.

It was the first time his weekly coverage was even within 10 percentage points of Obama's.

Jurkowitz pointed to two major factors: One was the ad released exactly one week ago that used images of Hilton and Britney Spears to claim that Obama was the biggest celebrity in the world. The campaign repeated the theme in interviews and memos, and on Wednesday released a new ad asking, "Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?"

The other factor, Jurkowitz said, was a degree of introspection on the part of the media, which he said reassessed their own coverage of Obama as network and cable news outlets went gaga over his trip abroad.

A similar shift in scrutiny seemed to happen during the Democratic primary, after Hillary Clinton's campaign complained that Obama was getting favorable treatment.

The New York senator noted at a late February debate in Ohio that she always seems to get the first question, and even cited a Saturday Night Live sketch to make her point that Obama gets better treatment. A few weeks later, critical stories on Obama's controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., dominated campaign coverage.

"You have some sense of déjà vu," Jurkowitz said.

McCain also commanded recent coverage by alleging that Obama played the race card by saying Republicans would make voters afraid of him because he doesn't look like other presidents.

It's unclear whether the level of attention McCain's received will hold, or blow over.

But if he's the flavor of the week, it comes at a price.

According to the TNS/Campaign Media Analysis Group, McCain was recently spending over $400,000 a day -- or just about 100 percent of his ad spending -- on the celebrity ad alone.

CMAG Chief Operating Officer Evan Tracey told FOXNews.com that the first celebrity ad is probably at the end of its run, but the theme could return.

"I think that the Paris and Britney thing, I think they got everything out of that they can get out of that," he said.

A flurry of ads, both online and on TV, have aired in recent days, and Tracey said the number and diversity of ads will only grow, all the way until Labor Day.

Both campaigns are prepared to spend at least $5 million on ads during the Olympics.

"The ads replace the rallies as campaign events. The ads become campaign events and are covered as such - and this is really where the dialogue between the campaigns takes place," Tracey said. "This is the sweet spot for the ads wars -- this sort of dead zone between nominations and conventions."

He said the two candidates are keeping pace with one another with Obama spending about $500,000 a day on ads. In the past 30 days, Obama has run 51,000 total commercials and McCain has run more than 30,000, Tracey said. McCain's have generally been longer spots.

Hilton, whose mother had criticized McCain for using her image in his ad, even released a Web video of her own mocking McCain.

But it's not necessarily a bad thing for McCain to have the socialite heiress throwing mud. That too earned air time.

Pete Snyder, CEO of New Media Strategies, said it doesn't matter if some of the coverage McCain earns is negative.

"The real thing here is, it's taking Obama off message, and more so it's taking the media off message as well," Snyder, a McCain supporter, told FOX News. "Just rewind about 10 days ago, it was all Obama all the time. ... And now in just a short couple days John McCain has people talking about energy policy, talking about Obama as a celebrity and injecting Paris Hilton into the race."

After Obama opened up a 9-point lead over McCain in the Gallup daily tracking poll late last month, McCain over the weekend closed that lead to a tie. On Wednesday, Obama was leading by 2 points - 46-to-44 percent.

The Politico Web site ran a story Wednesday in which pollsters questioned why Obama was not breaking the 50 percent threshold considering what appears to be a favorable Democratic climate.

But Democratic strategist Bob Beckel noted that it's "highly unusual" for any non-incumbent candidate to be over 50 percent in the summer months.

Several polls in battleground states -- like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado -- still show Obama ahead.

"This race is still very much in Obama's hands -- national polls are just notoriously unreliable in the summer," Beckel said.

McCain also runs the risk of trivializing the presidential race, a possibility Obama is not hesitant to point out.

"If you think that we can create a better future and we can have a more serious politics than we have right now -- one that focuses on solving our problems instead of on Paris Hilton and Britney Spears -- then I need you to vote for me," Obama told Indiana voters Wednesday.

FOX News' Judson Berger and Bonney Kapp contributed to this report.