political advertising

UC Irvine professor Richard L. Hasen: “The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will have important ramifications on national issues from abortion to affirmative action to climate change to gun rights. But first and foremost, the decision [on Scalia’s replacement] could bring an end, at least for a time, to one of the country’s most hated decisions, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Maybe, at least for a while, the courts will stop our elections from becoming increasingly bankrolled by the super-wealthy.”

How serious is Bernie Sanders about winning Nevada? Ralston Reports says it’s confirmed (from someone who has seen the buys) he just made a $1 million buy for the coming week (30-second and 60-second spots), bringing his total to $3.6 million spent on the airwaves — twice what Hillary Clinton has bought overall and almost three times what she has on through the 15th. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The new publication, Political Advertising: A Guide for the TV Sales Executive, is available free from TVNewsCheck and the law firm of Garvey Shubert Barer. “The booklet is designed to help sales execs to deal with political buyers and stay out of hot water with the regulators,” says Harry A. Jessell, editor of TVNewsCheck.

Local access programming has gone digital and given campaigns another channel to reach voters in early primary states. Programming Corp. of America recently partnered with the Des Moines Register and WMUR Boston in New Hampshire to make additional pre-roll inventory available to campaigns and PACs before its Web series lineup.

A recent Nielsen study explored how identifying the right dayparts and programs in local markets can effectively reach voters across the full political spectrum including Super Democrats, Ultra Conservatives and On-The-Fence Liberals, as well as Conservative Democrats, Left-Out Democrats, Mild Republicans, Uninvolved Conservatives and Green Traditionalists. For the study, Nielsen matched TV viewing data from second-quarter 2015 with voter segmentation data in the Cleveland, Denver and Tampa-St. Petersburg DMAs.

The FCC voted today to make more information about political ads available online. Cable TV, satellite and radio stations will all soon have to start posting information about the political campaigns and outside groups buying advertising on their platforms. This will bring those media in line with requirements for TV broadcasters.

House Democrats on Wednesday pressed for the FCC to reveal the sponsors of political advertisements. “In today’s political reality of non-stop campaigning, our system continues to fail the American people by allowing special interests and shadow groups to flood our airwaves with anonymous ads, with no disclosure whatsoever,” the lawmakers said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Snapchat is touting its advertising potential in this year’s political campaigns, but the cycle is moving too fast for the company to capture a sizable share of campaigns budgets, digital consultants say. The company is searching for acquisitions while teasing new advertising features it hopes will match Facebook in targeting and verification.

Political groups are flooding the airways during popular game shows, including Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy as well as local news and network morning shows as they try to influence presidential primary voters, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Since March 1, more than 110,000 ad spots have aired during more than 1,500 different TV shows in at least 48 states.

All the forecasts predict huge increases over 2012, and it’s a good bet those numbers will be smashed, with huge amounts of money still in the wings. What’s it mean for media buyers? Headaches.

Fox and Scripps veteran Marta Salazar is tapped to oversee political advertising sales for the company’s television and radio stations.

In some battleground markets, a presidential race can soak up a third or more of local broadcast TV advertising time, crowding out auto dealers, who are typically the biggest buyers of local TV ad time, according to a Bloomberg analysis. That shift, according to the analysis of data from Kantar Media Intelligence, CMAG and Kelley Blue Book, can hurt sales.

The people and groups paying for political ads on cable and satellite television will likely soon be searchable in a central online database maintained by the FCC. The FCC is slated to vote this month (before the Iowa caucuses) on rules that would require cable and satellite TV operators to post information online about advertising spending and who is behind the ads. The rules will also extend to broadcast and satellite radio.

Candidates and the outside groups supporting them are betting that television ads will remain a crucial political battlefield when signs increasingly suggest otherwise.

After claiming for months that he would join other top-tier GOP presidential candidates in running paid television advertisements, the real-estate mogul has reserved about $1.9 million for a seven-day ad blitz beginning Tuesday in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Disruption will meet velocity in 2016, when trends like OTT and distributed publishing that have already shown their face will now accelerate with dramatic force. NetNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp looks at six media dynamics that will change the game in 2016.

Sources in the Trump camp say they will soon launch a major ad blitz that could cost at least $2 million a week, and possibly several times that. The initial wave of ads will focus on Trump’s vision and his stance on key issues — no bio spots necessary for the celebrity candidate — but that could change if any GOP rivals target him with negative commercials.

The groups, conceived as a way to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on television, are now overseeing nuts-and-bolts jobs like field operations and data collection.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley added his voice to others calling for the ABC affil WMUR Manchester, N.H., to negotiate with the IBEW over a new contract. He also suggested the two other Democratic candidates for president should stop advertising on WMUR and other Hearst-owned stations.

The new “We Get Voters” campaign promotes the value of political advertising on local broadcast TV. The push includes a new website, a commercial, commissioning research and “a major presence” at political events throughout 2016.

Spending has increased on political ads on the radio, which may be more effective at targeting a candidate’s intended audience, some strategists say. Television viewers can tune out, and online audiences can scroll by or click “Skip this ad.” But radio listeners, stuck in their cars for long stretches, may be the closest thing to a captive audience for political commercials.

Manchester, N.H.’s WMUR is, once again, reaping the benefits of being the only game in town during an election. This time it’s seeing an uptick in ad buys for the state’s primary in February.

Rubio’s campaign is getting twice the ads for half the price of Bush’s super PAC, undercutting his rival’s cash advantage. According to media buyers and a Politico review of TV ad purchase data, Bush and his allies are on pace to spend $5 million more than Team Rubio on broadcast, cable and radio ads through the first four voting states — but for that sum, they will put fewer ads on the airwaves.

Broadcasting from Iowa’s capital city Des Moines to 434,500 TV households in the country’s 72nd TV market, Hearst’s KCCI takes on outsize importance among the nation’s television stations every four years. Iowans are the first in the nation to vote in presidential caucuses, setting the tone for the rest of the campaign season. As a result, presidential candidates devote significant face time to KCCI, the perennial market leader and its rival, Tribune’s WHO. And the stations respond in kind, adding more political coverage to the menu of news offerings.

Here are six suggestions on how to make sure your station has the necessary knowledge and tools to manage your share of the $3.3 billion in political ad money expected to be spent over the next year.

“We’re going to start advertising a little bit,” Donald Trump told Sean Hannity Tuesday night on the latter’s Fox News Channel program. This as a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Ben Carson in the lead among GOP White House hopefuls at 29%, ahead of Trump at 23%, Marco Rubio at 11%, Ted Cruz at 10% and Jeb Bush at 8%.

The World War II general was the first presidential candidate to be packaged by ad men, who offset his wooden stump appearances with expensive commercials.

Television’s quadrennial gold rush is on, and promises to be fiercer and richer than ever. A perfect storm of conditions is driving a leap in TV spending that is projected to hit $4.4 billion for the 2016 election cycle, encompassing federal and state races, up from $3.8 billion in 2012, according to Kantar Media. This political spending surge has helped drive the burst of mergers and acquisitions activity among TV station owners during the past three years.

Helping to navigate the expected wild swings in local TV advertising inventory for the political season, pay TV provider advertising sales company Viamedia and media measurement company Rentrak have announced a political advertising planning tool.

Some of the most important real estate in presidential politics is actually right in front of your nose. Or under your thumbs — it really depends on how you log onto Facebook. The social network is now a key place for campaigns to advertise. One reason for that: It’s getting easier and easier for campaigns to target those ads to very specific, tailor-made audiences.

Two Northern Virginia Republicans running for the House of Delegates will launch a $336,000 TV ad campaign on Wednesday that links their Democratic rivals to Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s plan to turn Interstate 66 inside the Washington Beltway into a toll road for some commuters.

An earlier primary as well as competitive races for incumbent Governor Pat McCrory (above) and possibly the Senate should put stations in the Tar Heel state among the top recipients of political advertising revenue next year.

Political pitches will interrupt Wheel of Fortune, Sunday Night Football and the evening news for months on TV stations from Council Bluffs to Dubuque. But in the final week before the first-in-the-nation caucuses, advertising levels will reach a fever pitch.

BuzzFeed is bring native political video ads into its mix, and Rena Shapiro has been tapped as VP, politics and advocacy, to oversee the venture. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures will collaborate in the venture, and the ads will — no surprise — be labeled as such.

For some strategically located TV stations, all those (mostly) negative campaign ads are helping create highly positive bottom lines.

Political campaigns have turned to short, attention-grabbing digital ads for mobile devices that are sharper and more creative in presenting a political message.

Political candidates and advocacy groups will be spending $3.3 billion on local TV next year, but it will not be evenly distributed across the industry, forecasts Steve Passwaiter of Kantar Media, which tracks ad spending of all kinds. It goes to the states and markets where the hot races are, he said. What’s more, digital media will be stepping up efforts to take more of the political dollars, he said. “They smell the opportunity.”

Thanks in large part to the campaign spending flood unleashed in 2010 by the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ SpeechNOW.org decision, local broadcast television remains that rare legacy media business where things are still looking up. The key reason why political advertisers have stayed so loyal to TV while other advertisers have been straying has to do with the target demographic.

TVB President Steve Lanzano says that Washington PR firm The Herald Group will answer claims by digital media that TV is wasteful and inefficient as digital goes after a larger share of the mounting political advertising dollars.