Midterm ad spending next year is projected to top $9 billion, which will exacerbate the issue of clutter that political media buyers are already struggling with.
In fact, maneuvering through the ad saturation of voters’ screens may be a greater challenge for the Republican side, which hasn’t been as effective as Democrats in channeling donor money to candidates who get the lowest unit rate when buying TV time, according to Adam Wise, VP of client strategy at National Media.
He pointed to the Georgia Senate runoff where $520 million was spent in a 45-day period from Election Day 2020 to Jan. 5.
“Republicans held a significant linear spend advantage, but candidate dollars, when you go back and look at purchasing power parity, [Democrats] actually outspent Republicans by $45 million because their dollars went 4.4 times further and 75 percent of their spend was with Warnock and Ossoff,” Wise said Sept. 9 at C&E’s Reed Awards Conference in DC.
“Really that’s going to be a big challenge for the Republicans going into next cycle. [Last cycle] on the Senate map, we were outspent by an effective dollar amount of $298 million dollars,” he added. “How we can get that money to candidates and how candidates can function smarter and bigger is going to be a really big challenge for the party.”
Getting the money into candidates’ hands is one thing, spending it efficiently is another. “We’re seeing 55 percent more advertisers that are spending on average 80 percent more,” he said of the 2022 Senate map.
As a result, campaigns will have to spread their spending out across broadcast, cable, radio and connected TV in order to reach voters with their messaging, Wise said. “You have to combine all of these things together.”
