With political advertisers investing heavily on local TV particularly in battleground states, the result can be competition and clutter that crowds out brand advertising.
That’s based on Kantar’s analysis of the 2016 election cycle — in particular, the final three weeks of the campaign season.
According to Kantar, during the last three weeks of the campaign season, political advertising totaled 32% of local ad time within the battleground markets studied — an increase of 26% from the beginning of the season.
Battleground markets analyzed included Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, non-political advertisers saw their share of Spot TV inventory fall from 77% to 51% — a corresponding decline of 26%. Station promos were the one category that stayed steady at 17%.
The impact of political advertisers’ rising tide hit across all categories.
Could 2020 bring even more headaches for AEs and GSMs? Kantar suggests that will be the case.
Automotive, which was the highest-spending category, saw the deepest decline, falling to 9% of all ads during the weeks right before the election as compared to 14% at the start of peak political season.
The telecom, education and medical services sectors saw steeper declines, with education advertising’s share by half to reach just 2%.
Local news was a particularly significant channel for political advertisers. During the final weeks of the election season, Kantar also found that political advertising took up 43% of available slots on local news in battleground markets, as compared to just 10% at the start of the season.
“Brands seem to typically be responding to the huge influx of political advertising by reducing the number of spots they run rather than ceasing advertising altogether,” Kantar noted. “Specifically, the number of brands advertising on local TV fell 11% from the beginning to the end of the campaign season, even as the number of ads those brands ran fell 26%.”
Jon Swallen, Chief Research Officer at Kantar’s Media division, commented, “This trend indicates that advertisers are trying to at least maintain some presence for their brands during election season, although they are no longer able to run as many ads. Stations may also be trying to make sure they do not shut out local advertisers even as the campaigns drag on.”
