As the Iowa caucuses approach, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is gathering pace as Republican candidates jostle for their party’s nomination and pour money into political advertising.
This year’s election cycle is already expected to see the highest political ad spending all timeand new data from the CMAG division of advertising intelligence firm Vivvix revealed that $154 million was pumped into ads for the 2024 US presidential election before the new year even began.
We spoke with people from two political advertising companies, DSPolitical and Blue State, as well as the vice president of political sales at LG’s Ad Solutions division, to learn more about political advertising trends that could define the impending elections. There were three big takeaways.
AI will transform political marketing in more ways than one.
Keith E. Norman, vice president of political practice sales at LG Ad Solutions: Suppose a political candidate wants to test whether a message about energy, or a message about women’s reproductive rights, or a message about the economy, can be more effective when talking about his program and his problems to voters. I could consider using AI to very quickly create three different ads that could be tested in a limited way, not for broadcast or not for streaming (capacity), but just to see again which of these ads would have the more impact.
Mark Jablonowski, President and CTO of DSPolitical: I think you’re going to see a lot of organic potential misinformation coming from generative AI. This is less of a concern on the paid media side. It’s great the platforms are require disclosure of generative AI in paid advertising, but many concerns will arise: “How can you verify that this organic clip that goes viral is actually real?” This will put the campaigns in a difficult situation.
Reproductive rights will be a major theme in 2024 election ads.
Thom Josephson, media director at Blue State: Number 1 is abortion and women’s reproductive rights. We are in a post-Roe deer world, and I don’t think anyone is going to dance around that. I think this is an issue that Democrats are very strong on and have been very strong on. I think it’s a place where Republicans have absolutely abhorrent opinions and perspectives, or are too ashamed to talk about their abhorrent opinions and perspectives to run a single ad there. I think this will probably be the No. 1 thing that will speak to a lot of really valuable protesters, including women and young people in general, and I think the Republican Party is completely out of step on this.
Receive marketing news you’ll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing professionals about the latest in branding, social media and ad technology through our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences and digital guides.
Jablonowski: For Democrats, choice is the primary driving force and we’ve seen it in many of the 2023 elections. Roe v. Wade By being overthrown, you really energized a huge base on the Democratic side. Republican candidates will be particularly vulnerable to choice messages. We’re seeing this time and time again across the country, so I would expect to see a lot more messaging around women’s right to choose.
CTV ads are growing in popularity, but don’t count out linear TV just yet.
Josephson: What we’ve seen over the last few cycles and over the last few years in general is a relative decline in linear television and broadcast television. It’s still very popular; people continue to advertise and invest millions of dollars in it. I think it will probably be the largest component of advertising in 2024, but CTV is growing rapidly. More and more platforms are available, and more and more of them are including ads as an optional tier. Netflix, for example, added an advertising tier. A few other platforms have recently expanded this ad tier or increased prices on non-ad-supported tiers. The other thing that works for ads here is bundling, where you include a few different combinations, like Disney+, Hulu, etc., but you include them with ads. It actually increases the group of people that can be targeted, and I think advertisers — and political advertisers in particular — are recognizing that they’re starting to use CTV as one of their primary targeting channels to reach almost all audiences.
Norman: Nearly nine in ten voters watch streaming TV with others. There is a strong propensity for co-viewing. If you’re a political marketer, you can reach two voters for the price of one ad, or even three voters.
Jablonowski: Advertising on CTV is one of the most important ways for campaigns to speak to their voters, because with broadcast you have really limited ways to only speak to the voters you need. Just look at some elections, like in Virginia, for the 2023 state elections, you have candidates that have to buy broadcast ads… Some campaigns are going to continue to make sure that they cover their voters in the way that they have been doing this for a long time, and other campaigns will continue to evolve towards the most efficient vehicles on the market.
