A group of local broadcasters led by The E.W. Scripps Company has come together to political advertisers with what it believes is “efficient and broad audience reach” on connected TV platforms during what’s expected to be a record election-spending year.
Cox Media Group, Capitol Broadcasting Company, and Graham Media Group are among the broadcasters participating in the initiative, named the “Scripps Political CTV Consortium.”
“Collectively, we have a wall of inventory, and we’ve found a way to work together to make it easy for agencies to access that,” said Samantha Osborne, who serves as the consortium’s senior director of national sales and is based in Washington, D.C. “They can reach a high percentage of voters while making their own decisions but without having to work through numerous sales reps from different organizations. With the broadcasters we’ve assembled, we have billions of monthly premium connected TV impressions available for political advertisers.”
Experts project roughly $9 billion in spending in 2022, matching the presidential cycle of 2020, with as much as $1.8 billion of that expected to go to internet-delivered television platforms, or Connected TV.
In 10 states alone – Florida, California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan – $3.9 billion is projected to be spent on political advertising.
The Scripps Political CTV Consortium gives agencies an opportunity to work with one representative to reach multiple publishers. Osborne said Scripps is exclusively working with independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform Magnite to make Connected TV inventory available to agencies and programmatic buyers.
“There are times when it makes sense to work together to produce a new and innovative product for the best interest of customers,” said John Conway, Vice President of WRAL Digital for Capitol Broadcasting. “This is one of those times when we can provide industry-leading service by collaborating.”
