It’s every week until Election Day and the political rhetoric and promoting are running at a deafening volume and staggering velocity. This last part is making it hard for brands to be heard throughout the critical holiday shopping season. This is particularly true in swing states where CPM has risen significantly.
This yr, many national brands anticipated this and diverted a few of their budgets away from competitive swing states, based on CTV and programmatic adtech company Keynes Digital. Regional brands in swing states also got some relief, as political advertisers maxed out linear TV, but left some CTV inventory for brands.
Politics drive up CPMs. No surprise that CTV cost-per-mille (CPM) went up in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona. How much? CPMs rose 8% year-over-year for this election season.
In non-swing states, CPMs decreased 2.5% over last yr.
The lower CPMs in non-swing states attract more spending by national advertisers. The reddest and bluest states get fewer political ads and consequently more brand promoting.
“Brands that only have a presence in swing states or concentrate on growing in those states will feel limited volumes and price increases,” said Dan Larkman, CEO and founding father of Keynes Digital. “For brands focused nationwide, ad spending has shifted (barely) to geography that tends to have higher conversion rates and aren’t feeling the impact of the elections.”
Non-swing states received 2.2x more CTV spend than in swing states this yr. In 2023, non-swing states saw 1.7x more versus swing states.
Swing-state CTV availability. It may very well be worse. Sure, CPMs are higher in swing states, but inventory is much from getting maxed out, Larkman said. Political campaigns put much of their budgets into linear TV, saturating that channel. Plus, less promoting by national competitors is a possibility for regional swing-state brands that must advertise in these states.
“Linear TV networks are selling out and pushing these budgets to digital channels. That said, the ten.5% difference in CPM is way lower than we’d have expected,” said Larkman.
He added: “This is a polarizing election season, and donations are sky-high. Only a slight increase in CPM tells me there remains to be plenty of unfilled ad space and plenty of opportunity for brands to capitalize now and/or after the elections.”
Why we care. This yr, digital video (including CTV) was projected to surpass linear TV spend for the primary time. Major streamers like Netflix and Disney+ now have sizable ad-supported subscription tiers allowing advertisers to succeed in premium content viewers. So, when major events like elections occur, marketers should take stock of which customers are affected and adjust spending in emerging channels like CTV.
Dig deeper: 2024 elections playbook works for brands too
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