At this moment in time, it would be foolish to try and predict the political outcomes of the 2024 election cycle. But we can start to predict the price tags… and those will be extremely high. A recent report by AdImpact, shared by CNN, projects that election advertising aimed at 2024 voters will likely exceed $10 billion, more than either 2016 or 2020. Some experts even expect spending of more than $11 billion.
Along with overall budget increase, we’ve also seen an
increase in the percentage of that money going to digital avenues. From the
2012 race to 2016, digital political ads went from less than 2% of spend to
more than 14%. And of course, 2020’s Covid-hampered campaigning will be a bit
of an outlier, but it’s still notable that Biden and Trump’s digital spending
accounted for over 35% of their averaged ad budgets.
As election season attention is turned to younger voters, hyperlocal
races, and crucial swing districts, digital marketing’s combination of youth
appeal, targeting capability, and ROI potential will become increasingly
attractive to campaign strategists. Translating online success into voting
power is still a bit of a mystery in the campaigning world, however – candidate
and issues-based campaigns are trying everything from social media integrations
to Smart TV ads to influencer partnerships, with mixed results and constant
attribution questions. Taylor Swift’s recent Instagram post encouraging voter
registration wasn’t a partnership, but Vote.org saw a 1226% “jump in
participation” after she shared a link to the site, according to NPR. Online
voter registration is one thing, but actually election actions are another. When
a voter’s turnout isn’t directly trackable to their digital touches, where do
you credit your votes?
Questions to ask ourselves as digital marketers, as this election cycle
heats up:
- Where are different candidates focusing their digital spend, and what does it tell us about the voters they’re targeting?
- In the past, political campaigning has lagged significantly behind other industries in terms of digital strategy adoption – is that the case this time? Who’s on top of the tech, and who’s behind the times?
- What kind of candidates are relying more on digital to reach their voters? Local or national? Incumbent or challenger? Republican, Democrat, or third party?
- How are digital campaigning laws different state-by-state, and how does that affect digital political ads?
- When the results come in, what correlations (or lack thereof) will we see between digital spend and the outcomes?
Sources:
- https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/12/politics/ad-spending-record-2024-cycle/index.html
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhomonoff/2020/12/08/2020-political-ad-spending-exploded-did-it-work/?sh=7eec805c3ce0
- https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/01/04/us-political-ad-spend-hit-record-high-2016-tv-lost-momentum-thanks-donald-trump
- https://adage.com/article/opinion/2024-elections-political-ad-spending-projected-top-11-billion-2024/2504126
- https://www.techforcampaigns.org/impact/2020-political-digital-advertising-report
- https://www.techforcampaigns.org/results/2022-digital-ads-report
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1182087/political-advertising-spending-election-cycle-by-medium-united-states/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/elections/influencers-political-ads-tiktok-instagram.html
- https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201183160/taylor-swift-instagram-voter-registration
- https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/digital-political-ads
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