political advertising

Sam Liccardo (center) reports raising $1.65 million in the fourth quarter, just weeks after announcing his entry into a crowded field in a rare open Bay Area seat. (SusanWalsh/AP)

Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign has ceased spending on television advertising ahead of next month’s Republican presidential contests, NBC News reported Tuesday. The Republican biotech entrepreneur’s campaign reduced TV ad spending from $200,000 during the first week of December to $6,000 last week, according to AdImpact, a website that tracks advertising spending, NBC reported. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)

Experts are warning that the spread of misinformation could get worse in the coming presidential election contest. The safeguards that attempted to counter the bogus claims the last time are eroding, while the tools and systems that create and spread them are only getting stronger.

The billionaire Koch family and its network of like-minded donors are tiptoeing back into presidential politics, putting money behind their opposition to former President Donald Trump and backing an alternative candidate in the 2024 Republican primary, Nikki Haley.

It’s the latest change for the organization, which now says it is “laser focused” on its ground game in early states.

TVNewsCheck Editor at Large Harry Jessell and Editor Michael Depp look back over an eventful year in broadcast business news and ahead to the steepest challenges it will confront in 2024. A full transcript of the conversation is included. [Ed. note: Jessell erroneously noted Nexstar stock took a 32% hit, when it actually lost 32 points. Since this episode was recorded, its stock rebounded to 155 yesterday.]

Democratic candidates, including Elon Musk’s most vocal critics, have spent over a million dollars to run thousands of political ads on X.

Campaigns on the state and federal level will be required to clearly say which political advertisements airing in Michigan were created using artificial intelligence under legislation expected to be signed in the coming days by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. It also would prohibit use of AI-generated deepfakes within 90 days of an election without a separate disclosure identifying the media as manipulated. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Media fragmentation, challenges in reaching younger audiences and a danger of alienating some voters with overly repetitive ads mean that political campaigns will need to be both omniscreen and more targeted than ever in 2024. That’s the key takeaway from a guide to 2024 political advertising from Samba TV, based on its smart-TV ACR data and two surveys with HarrisX: one among 2,507 U.S. adults in August and one among 1,004 voters in November.

Details of the advertising plans, which represent the Haley campaign’s first official advertising reservation, were obtained by The Associated Press ahead of a public announcement expected Monday. Haley’s planned investment, as of now, is more than five times larger than DeSantis’ current advertising reserves for the same time period, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

One month after rolling out various generative artificial intelligence tools to advertisers, Meta is restricting political campaigns and advertisers in other regulated industries from using these very products — due to concerns that these tools could be used to intensify the spread of election misinformation. 

While federal efforts to require labeling of political ads using AI have yet to result in any such regulation, a few states have stepped into the void and adopted their own requirements. Even without regulation, media companies still need to be wary of the use of AI being used to generate false images of candidates for use in attack ads.  While broadcasters and local cable companies are insulated from liability for the content of ads from legally qualified candidates and their authorized committees, they can have liability for ads from non-candidate groups. Even non-regulated companies, such as streaming companies that are not subject to the Communications Act requirements that candidate ads not be censored, may have liability for the content of candidate ads.

Executives from NBCUniversal Local, Disney Advertising Sales Local, E.W. Scripps, Tegna and Ticker News shared their insights and experiences in maximizing streaming revenue and the most promising pathways to growth at a TV2025 session. Despite the expected election year bonanza, there are challenges. Among them: the lack of consensus about what currency should be used for transactions.

With a big ad spending election year around the corner, Magnite said it hired Erik Brydges as head of political demand, a new position at the company. Brydges was previously with Microsoft Advertising’s Xandr unit, responsible for Xandr’s political sales strategy as head of political. In his new post, Brydges will oversee Magnite’s political demand facilitation team, leading the company’s effort to connect political advertisers to key voters and constituents.

Demand-side platform/DSP The Trade Desk has integrated a new suite of AI-powered audience segments from Proximic by Comscore that allow for capturing TV ad exposure down to the local level for political campaign audience targeting.

In a memo to donors, Trust in the Mission PAC said, “we aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”

Musk’s volatile leadership of the social-media platform has pushed down its prices — which might give it an edge.

If current polls are to be believed, American voters are looking with a sense of dread at a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024. Yet, widely anticipating the most expensive election in the nation’s history, another cycle of bitter and polarized politics perversely may be exactly the bottom-line boost TV broadcasters and cable networks need.

Stations expect to reap $5-plus billion from political spending on linear and CTV platforms next year.

The sales veteran will oversee the Tegna unit’s political sales efforts, drive new business development and manage relationships with political agencies and consultants.

X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, said Tuesday it would now allow political advertising in the U.S. from candidates and political parties and expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Before billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company last October, Twitter had banned all political ads globally since 2019. In January, Twitter lifted the ban and began allowing “cause-based ads” in the U.S. that raise awareness of issues such as voter registration, and said it planned to expand the types of political ads it would allow on the platform.

Republicans have waged a decades-long battle to blow up the campaign-finance laws that rein in big-money spending. Now, they are making a play that could end in their biggest victory since the Citizens United ruling in 2010. The GOP is growing increasingly optimistic about their prospects in a little-noticed lawsuit that would allow official party committees and candidates to coordinate freely by removing current spending restrictions. If successful, it would represent a seismic shift in how tens of millions of campaign dollars are spent and upend a well-established political ecosystem for TV advertising.

Ramping up national TV advertising around recent political news — the recent Republican Presidential Primary Debate, candidates’ appearances at the Iowa State Fair and the indictments of the former president, super PAC groups spiked ad spending over the last 60 days. For the last seven weeks, national TV political advertising has climbed to $3.7 million — a total of 952 airings amassing 975.4 million impressions, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

Agencies want broadcasters to run what they pay for and feel that should no longer be challenging in 2023, executives from Sinclair, Magna, Icon International and Locality said during a TVNewsCheck webinar last week.

Half-way through the off-year leading into the next presidential political media-buying cycle, the 2024 race already has spent twice as much as the 2020 cycle-to-date, according to an analysis by political and general market ad spending database analyst AdImpact. The $480.2 million spent through July 7, 2023, is 99.6% more than what was spent through the same point in 2019, according to the analysis.

Star Cillian Murphy and producers fired back at the Florida governor for using their footage in a heavily criticized anti-LGBTQ ad.

Advertisers may wonder how the reversal of YouTube’s decision to take down content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 or other elections will impact ad-placement decisions. The change, which YouTube announced Friday, will not impact its advertising policies or YouTube monetization policies.

Emily Barr, TVNewsCheck columnist and former CEO-president of Graham Media, weighs in on the troubling implications of Sinclair’s closure of five newsrooms across its markets and what shoes may drop next for an industry up against serious headwinds. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Elon Musk took over Twitter last fall with a pledge of transparency for the social media giant — but so far political advertising on the platform has been anything but forthcoming. Twitter has failed to disclose some political ads running on its site since early March, according to a review of its activity by Politico. At least three promoted fundraising tweets were not included in Twitter’s own data, seemingly contradicting the company’s policies and raising doubts about the integrity of the platform’s data and how many other political ads could go unreported.

In a request for declaratory ruling filed by the Florida Association of Broadcasters, an interesting question has been posed to the FCC – can other political advertisers who buy time during the LUR period be entitled to “lowest unit rates” rates if they are “authorized” by the political candidate?  Normally, such non-candidate political ads (usually referred to as issue ads) are charged much higher rates than those charged to candidates.

The final count is in, and ad spending for the U.S. 2022 elections came in 7.5% lower than originally forecast, according to final estimates from competitive ad intelligence firm AdImpact. Total ad spending by candidates and other advertisers across all national, state and local elections came in at $8.94 billion — 7.5% less than the $9.67 billion that AdImpact originally forecast in August 2022.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has split with its longtime TV ad maker, Jamestown Associates. One of the firm’s partners has decided to work with a Trump rival in 2024: Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations who launched her presidential bid on Wednesday. The former president’s campaign, in turn, has decided that it would not renew its relationship with Jamestown, which crafted commercials for Trump during the 2016 and 2020 elections. Trump’s team also used the firm after he left the White House.

Democrats’ political committee focused on state legislatures is launching a new affiliated nonprofit whose first move is a digital ad campaign on abortion in Virginia — an early example of Democrats continuing to lean into the issue after a strong midterm performance.

Elon Musk’s social media service said it would begin to permit cause-based advertising to “facilitate public conversation around important topics.”

Campaign finance data shows Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus and Richard Uihlein of ULINE Inc. giving a total of $2.75 million to the Republican candidate.