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In a Presidential election year, all eyes tend to be on the leading candidates. Love ’em or hate ’em, two figures are looming large over this year’s race: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. While Biden and Trump are pulling all the focus, presidential campaigns aren’t driving most spending on TV stations this election year. Instead, down-ballot Senate, House, gubernatorial and other campaigns, and issues such as immigration and abortion are what will be bringing in the bucks, said panelists at a TVNewsCheck webinar last Tuesday titled “Optimizing Political Revenue in a Multiplatform World.”
Overall spending on political advertising in the 2024 campaign cycle is expected to increase 30% from 2020, exceeding $12 billion, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. Approximately 72% of that money — nearly $9 billion — will go to traditional media and specifically to television.
“We still tend to see a lot of broadcast spending,” said Bobby Mushroe, partner, Sage Media Planning. “There really is no other medium that can move numbers with the kind of speed that you need for a political campaign. So, broadcast is still getting the lion’s share of the spending except in some of these very expensive markets with tiny districts.”
TV stations won’t start seeing most of that financial windfall until the third quarter of this year, panelists said. Had the Republican presidential primary been more contested, spending would have begun earlier, but by Super Tuesday, only former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley remained in the Republican primary