political advertising

The station group says it expects 2018 political advertising revenue to beat its $75 million from 2014 and $101 million from 2016.

What can you do if your station’s news report is used in an incomplete or misleading way by an organization or candidate with an agenda? Unfortunately, the answer may be “not much.”

A half-dozen senators are on the receiving end of millions of dollars in ad spending over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh that heavily favors Republicans trying to confirm him over liberals trying to stop him. Conservatives have run more than $7.5 million in ads thus far compared with approximately $1.3 million from liberals in the fight over Kavanaugh’s confirmation, according to spending analyzed by Politico and Advertising Analytics.

A new section in Google’s Transparency report, announced Wednesday, titled Political Advertising, provides a list of advertisers who have spent amounts greater than $500. These advertisers are listed from highest to lowest amount spent. Searchable and downloadable information on ad spend in search, with display and video, details the amount that advertisers spent in any state.

Rep. Devin Nunes is sitting on an eye-popping pile of money he’s raised in recent months, with little reason to spend it yet. Except for one splurge: an unusually aggressive — and sustained — offensive against his local newspaper, which he is tearing into as “fake news.” In a campaign ad running more than two minutes — and appearing not only online, but also on radio and TV — Nunes casts the dominant newspaper in his California district as a “band of creeping correspondents,” criticizing The Fresno Bee for its routine reporting practices and for its coverage of a controversy surrounding a winery in which the Republican congressman invests.

President Trump and his political action committee spent $274,000 on ads on the social network since early May, outpacing the second-biggest spender, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood spent just over $188,000 on Facebook ads over the same period. The ads bought by Trump and his PAC were also seen the most by Facebook’s users, having been viewed by at least 37 million people since May.

A new group aiming to serve as a liberal counterweight to the right on judicial nominations plans to spend $5 million opposing President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick. Demand Justice will invest in radio, TV, digital and voter mobilization, an official said. The campaign will focus on Maine and Alaska, homes of moderate Senate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, respectively, as well as Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia, where vulnerable Senate Democrats are seeking reelection.

Here’s a rundown of what stations should be thinking about now, before the lowest unit rate windows open.

A major Democratic super PAC says it will book $43 million in early TV ads as the party looks to make big gains in the 2018 midterms and take back the House. House Majority PAC (HMP) says its initial list of ad buys will span 33 media markets in 20 states and Washington, D.C., and include broadcast and cable.

A top Democratic super PAC is spending $250,000 on a television ad buy to boost Democratic candidate Conor Lamb ahead of next month’s Pennsylvania special election.

While most of the principles governing the FCC rules on political broadcasting are relatively established, new advertising practices and opportunities always raise questions as to how those established rules are to be applied. Programmatic buying of ad time is one of those areas where these questions have arisen in recent years. In the last few years, programmatic buying has become the buzzword in broadcast ad circles. Here are some answers.

The move follows similar steps by Facebook and the introduction of a bill that seeks to bring more transparency to online political ads in an attempt to lessen the influence of Russia and other foreign entities on U.S. elections.

The National Rifle Association has canceled a week’s worth of television advertising in Virginia’s 2017 elections, in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas that authorities said has left more than 50 dead. The NRA was set to air ads starting Tuesday, media-buying sources said, with five weeks to go until Virginia’s statewide elections. But the group has now gone dark until Oct. 10.

New projections from Kantar Media/CMAG show $2.4 billion in political spending to come to TV stations in 2018, up 14% from the 2014 midterms. Projections for cable are 41% growth from $600 million in 2014 to $850 million next year.

There’s growing buzz among Congressional leaders and other groups to require a public disclosure portal for political ads on digital platforms like Facebook, which have looser requirements than TV and radio. “It’s going to be hard to regulate in this area,” said one election law expert. “But it’s clearly the frontier.” WSJ subscribers can read more. 

That would set new record for state-wide election, topping California’s Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman contest of 2010.The various campaigns on both sides have already raised upward of $90 million — and the general election is still 16 months away.

With elections looming in 2018 that look to generate lots of political advertising, broadcasters should be well versed in defending the current state of political fundraising and spending, particularly the newly won right of corporations and other associations to spend unlimited amounts in support of their causes and candidates.

In what appears to be a political media first, a Super Pac controlled by President Trump has released an ad attacking the character of a witness in advance of a highly anticipated Senate hearing. The ad, entitled “Showboat,” was released Tuesday by Trump’s Great America Alliance and attacks the character of former FBI Director James Comey, who is scheduled to speak publicly Thursday morning during a Senate hearing.

TVB, in partnership with the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), has introduced a new annual award, the Political Excellence in Local Media Marketing Solutions Award (EMMA). The Political EMMA […]

A “fake news” graphic superimposed over the faces of news anchors in the Trump commercial was cited by CNN, ABC and NBC for not airing the ad. The networks contend that makes it inaccurate, and ABC said it represents a personal attack.

Tegna’s Atlanta MNT affiliate this week added a 7 p.m. newscast with no fanfare, replacing a repeat of The Andy Griffith Show. Two sources said the newscast is temporary and tied directly to accommodate a flood of political ads in the hotly contested House seat race that have filled the inventory on co-owned NBC affiliate WXIA. They said the newscast will end after the runoff is over June 20.

There is unlikely to be another presidential campaign like the one that made Donald Trump our 45th president last year. But there are lasting lessons for local broadcasters to be derived from it: 1) their lock on the presidential spend may not be as strong as they might think; and 2) as sellers they have to get as smart about Big Data and targeted advertising as the buyers.

Gordon Borrell says that in addition to that decrease, digital was up $1.3 billion. In 2017, he says, core TV spending will be flat, with digital outselling traditional media. What stations need to do, he advises, is show advertisers how broadcast spend can help drive traffic to their website or Facebook page. “When they begin to put the two together — that broadcast advertising drives digital traffic better than anything else, and it does — than you’re going to see more … advertising.”

A common pattern among victorious Senate candidates in many key “battleground” states was the candidates’ use of local cable television advertising.  That finding comes from a preliminary analysis of cable […]

Senate TV spending crosses $750M mark Senate candidates and their allies spent more on television than Clinton and Trump.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have unveiled their final pitches to the American people before Election Day. The Republican and Democratic nominees for president have both released two-minute ads, which will reportedly both air this evening on CBS (during Kevin Can Wait) and NBC (during The Voice).

Now, in the late stage of the campaign, presidential candidates are doing some traditional marketing — increasing spending with a greater share going toward local TV versus national TV.

The Trump campaign has booked three commercial spots on the nationwide broadcast of Wednesday night’s Cubs-Indians matchup, a campaign spokesman said. And Clinton’s campaign has booked four spots, according to a source at Fox, the network broadcasting the game.

The party, which eschewed independent pro-Trump ads, is spending $3 million on coordinated ads boosting its nominee.

With the presidential race winding up, projections on how much will be spent on political advertising this year are being tamped down. The culprit is Donald Trump, whose campaign has relied far more on free media coverage than on paid advertising. The impact is being felt by television stations, which rely heavily on political spending and are already struggling against significant pressure elsewhere in their business.

The shortfall against 2014 means that spending in the critical political ad category will also be off against 2012, the last presidential year and best comp, according to researcher Brian Wieser. As expected, the gains and losses in the category varied from group to group.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign is outspending her Republican rival by a factor of two-to-one on television advertising in six battleground states in the final seven days before next Tuesday’s election. The Clinton team will spend a total of $25.8 million on TV spots in 13 states in the final week of the campaign, while Republican nominee Donald Trump is spending just $13.3 million in 12 states.

With days to go before voting, Hillary Clinton’s spending edge grows even larger while PACs supporting Donald Trump have fizzled. But the email revelations could spark a late Trump surge.

Donald Trump, seeking to boost momentum in the last days of the presidential election, wired $10 million of his own money into his presidential campaign Friday morning, two advisers told The Wall Street Journal. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.

We’re down to the last week and a half before the election, but broadcasters can’t let up quite yet, as the last week is almost always the busiest for political advertising. Candidates, PACs and other groups try to get the last word before the voters go to the polls. Here are three issues that broadcasters should be considering in these last days before the election.

As we approach Election Day, the political ads seem to be getting more and more frequent, and often more and more nasty. With the rise in the number of attack ads, stations are facing more and more demands from candidates who are being attacked in these ads, asking that the ads be pulled from the airwaves because the content is not truthful or otherwise presents a distorted picture of reality. What do stations do when confronted with these claims?