Anyone scrolling social media or watching TV recently has likely felt inundated with political ads.
Since Joe Biden exited the 2024 presidential race and Kamala Harris announced her presidential run on July 21, much has been made of her ability to organically rack up millions of views on social media.
Less than two weeks later, she and former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have released new campaigns attacking each other’s respective track records. Trump blamed Harris for the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, while Harris leaned into her tenure as a prosecutor and lambasted Trump as a water carrier for corporations.
Harris has also set out this week on a five-day-long swing state campaign trip as she looks to gain support as the new Democratic nominee.
Campaign spending is only expected to heat up as the race draws closer. Presidential election spending alone is projected to hit $2.7 billion this year, according to AdImpact.
Politicians and brands aren’t usually direct competitors. However, the increasing presence of political ads flooding key media channels impacts available inventory and how consumers receive ads generally — challenging brands to rethink their media strategies during the election season.
How political ads affect brand marketing
Up until this point in the election cycle, political ads have largely focused on fundraising. Now, it’s time for candidates to spend that money.
Historically, that’s entailed “jamming 30-second TV spots down everyone’s throat,” said Zac Moffatt, CEO of political ad agency Targeted Victory. Linear ads still command a lion’s share of the more than $10 billion politicians will spend during various U.S. political elections in 2024.
However, political advertisers, tracking shifts in media consumption, are now spending upwards of $1.5 billion on CTV — more than five times what they spent in 2020 — according to eMarketer estimates. Political clients have been especially interested in the ability to programmatically target voters who are predisposed to hearing their message, said Tom Blake, SVP and paid media lead at social impact agency Fenton.
Candidates are also more than doubling their spend on digital platforms compared to the last election cycle in 2020. Google, in particular, is expected to triple its political ad revenue from 2020 to $553.2 million this year, thanks to growing investment in YouTube.
As candidates flood these channels heading closer to election day, “political ads are going to take that much more inventory out of the ecosystem” for brands, said Dave Kersey, chief media officer at GSD&M.
“The expense and investment from politicians is going to be three or four times what it was four years ago, but there are only so many impressions,” he said.
More competition for inventory not only typically drives prices higher, but a deluge of political ads across platforms can also turn consumers off from ads across the board.
“It’s going to be hard for any demographic to avoid political advertising,” Kersey said. “There’s so much volume that to avoid it, you either have to stop consuming content or numb yourself to it. As consumers become numb to political advertising, they’re not going to be receptive to any brand advertising.”
How political spending will impact the social landscape
As political advertisers increase their digital spending, their social media platforms of choice are divided across party lines.
Left-leaning and bipartisan clients have largely invested in Snapchat and Meta, Blake said, adding that Fenton’s clients dedicate about 10% of their media mix to the former and 25% to the latter.
“Snapchat has been growing in importance because they have reasonable restrictions on political content,” he said. “They have an easy-to-navigate platform and a surprisingly large and active population. We’ve gotten a lot of bang for our buck on Snapchat compared to what we’re spending on Meta.”
Both of these platforms also have clear political ad disclosure rules. Snapchat requires political advertisers to display who’s paying for the ad at the top of the post. Meta requires a disclaimer disclosing the entity behind each political ad, but has an additional authorization process that makes scaling difficult, Blake said.
Fenton’s left-leaning and bipartisan clients have avoided paid advertising on X due to not just brand safety issues on the platform, but the negative optics of supporting Elon Musk, who has aligned himself with conservative figureheads and ideologies.
X has also become a home to misinformation and disinformation, with Musk himself violating the platform’s own policies against synthetic and manipulated media recently by sharing a deepfake video spoofing Harris.
However, this hasn’t stopped the Democratic Party from running paid ads on X as a whole, with many members spending just as much as their Republican counterparts.
Right-leaning clients, however, are spending more on X, said Targeted Victory’s Moffatt. In fact, X has become more interesting recently to this audience as it relaxed its rules and requirements for political ads, allowing them to run on the platform in August 2023 for the first time since 2019.
“There was never really a desire to work with them” in the past, he said. Now, X “brings a type of person to it who’s more engaged and informed. It’s the battlefield platform where people come in to find relevant, contextual, real-time content.”
Because TikTok is one of the only major platforms to ban political ads outright, it will likely be one of the largest recipients of media dollars from brands looking to sidestep political ads through November, Kersey said.
Platforms that allow political ads, even with restrictions, will be less fortunate as brands dial back paid efforts to avoid brand safety concerns brought on by volatile political news and debates. Fenton’s Blake said some brands have paused campaigns and reduced the frequency of their paid ads on platforms where political ads are running heavily, such as Meta, Snapchat and YouTube.
He added that they’re maintaining an organic presence on these platforms as brands can avoid inventory issues and better retain control of how they appear while maintaining direct engagement with consumers on their owned channels.
However, many agencies are advising brands to steer clear of political chatter on social media, even organically.
“No one wants to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” added Nadja Bellan-White, CEO of SS+K. “Look at the election. There’s such divisiveness on both sides and such a level of ‘blech.’”
