Amid a hotly contested presidential race and major battles for the control of the U.S. Congress, AdImpact has raised its projections for political ad spending in the 2023-2024 election cycle from $10.20 billion to $10.69 billion. That would make this cycle 19% more expensive than the 2019-2020 cycle during the last presidential election and set a new record for political advertising.
The higher forecast included an extra $255 million for broadcasters, boosting their total to $5.35 billion, AdImpact reported.
The new ad AdImpact data follows earnings reports from local broadcast station groups for Q1 2024 that saw some companies like Scripps raise their ad spending forecasts. Nexstar reported in Q1 that it had already booked two thirds of its political ad revenue goal but stopped short of raising its estimate. During its Q1 call, Sinclair president and CEO Christopher Ripley said it expected to “see record-breaking political advertising revenues in 2024, which equate to more than $350 million.”
AdImpact reported that through June 30, they had detected “more than 7.4K unique political TV ads, 700 more than 2022 and 2.6K more than 2020 over the same period. We project $5.35B on broadcast, $1.93B on cable, $1.51B on CTV, $1.12B on digital, $381M on radio, $309M on network cable, and $102M on satellite.”
The report also noted that the new projections represented a $244 million increase in their original forecasts for broadcast. “This maintains broadcast’s position as the dominant media type in the political ad spending landscape, accounting for just over 50% of total spending. Cable is expected to experience a slight decrease in share, from 19% to 18%, but will still see a net increase of $30M overall. CTV share will also increase, jumping from 13% to 14% of total cycle spending. The anticipated growth in CTV will likely result from gaining a larger slice of the overall increase in political ad spending rather than from a reallocation of funds away from the other media types.”
More data, including breakdowns by state, are available here.
