With little more than a month to go before the US presidential election season kicks off in Iowa, a new projection of political spending says a record $15.9bn will be spent on advertising, up more than 30% up on the 2019-2020 election cycle.
The assessment, by GroupM, one of the world’s largest paid advertising agencies, suggests total political ad revenue could add a billion more to reach a total of $17.1bn, if including direct mail pitches.
Despite voters already knowing the likely two nominees – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – depriving the two main parties of traditional meet-our-candidate introduction spending, the extraordinary spend on political advertising next year is now so large that it will be the 10th largest singular ad market in the world – larger than all of Australia’s.
The projected ad spending totals in the presidential election year will also be five times higher than the $3.6bn spent on political and issue ads during the last midterm elections. By the 2028 presidential election, the group said, political ad spending could reach $20bn.
According to the GroupM survey, obtained by Axios, a majority of political advertising spend in the US goes to local broadcast TV. But an increasing amount goes to digital platforms.
Other novelties of the year ahead in political advertising, the outlet said, are the use of AI to place ads. In August, the Federal Election Commission opened a public debate on how to address the malicious use of AI in campaign ads. The window for comments closed in October.
The GroupM projection is higher by $6bn than similar political ad spending forecasts. AdImpact projects the 2023-2024 election cycle will be the most expensive of all time, totaling $10.2bn in political expenditures across all media and a 13% increase over the 2019-2020 election cycle.
The survey projected that $2.7bn would be spent directly on presidential candidates, $2.1bn on Senate candidate spending, and $1.7bn on house candidates. The area projected to see the most spending on political advertising is “down ballot” – political spending not related to presidential, House, Senate or governor races, at $3.3bn.
