political advertising

The Clinton campaign and Priorities USA Action, the super PAC backing Clinton’s bid for president, are spending $29.3 million across 15 battleground states this week, according to ad buyers watching the market. Trump’s campaign and supportive outside groups are spending $15.8 million in 12 battleground states.

The state Senate campaign of Democrat Bob Buesing has sent letters to four Tampa TV stations demanding that they quit running a Republican Party ad attacking him, calling it “false, misleading and deceptive.”

One question that has come up repeatedly in these last few weeks before the election has been one about local candidates — usually running for state or municipal offices — who appear in advertisements for local businesses that they own or manage. Often times, these individuals will routinely appear in a business’ ads outside of election season, and the candidate simply wants to continue to appear on their business’ ads during the election as well. What is a station to do?

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is finally spending more money than Hillary Clinton’s. Trump’s campaign will spend almost $11.7 million on television ads set to run in 11 states this week, topping Clinton’s spending on ads for the first time. The Clinton campaign is spending $10.5 million on advertising in seven states.

House Republicans’ flagship super PAC and its allied nonprofit are infusing an additional $10 million into 15 House races across the country, days after a 2005 recording of Donald Trump’s lewd comments about sexual assault prompted a flurry of defections among Republicans in competitive races.

The national party breaks with tradition of spending millions on ads supporting its nominees. The lack of air cover has prompted grumbling from Trump aides and allies, many of whom believe that the RNC was never fully supportive of their candidate and that it’s now turning its back completely on the anti-establishment nominee as his poll numbers crater.

A new agreement gives Cambridge Analytica comScore’s television information to achieve better television buying for political and commercial clients.

Donald Trump has famously avoided most of the apparatus of a modern campaign in his run for the White House. But in one area, Trump’s campaign so far comes out on top: online ad spending.

As much as 90% of the money raised by political donors for will go toward broadcast TV ads, acording to Alixandria Lapp, executive director of the House Majority PAC. ““It’s clear from our data that local broadcast TV remains the biggest influencer of voter decisions.”

That’s a $500 million drop from what the research firm had originally expected and is just a hair better than what stations received from political advertisers four years ago.

Of the total, $40 million is slated for national TV and $40 million for digital, according to Trump’s senior communications adviser. The plan represents a new approach for the billionaire businessman.Through this week, his campaign has put only about $22 million into TV and radio ads for the general election.

The Campaign Legal Center reiterates its charge that many stations are not complying with rules to make available online information about their political advertising, including who is paying for the spots. It adds the Scripps-owned Cincinnati ABC affiliate to its earlier list and urges the FCC to move before the election “to ensure transparency in our electoral system and to protect voters’ right to know by whom they are being persuaded.”

With a 24/7 news cycle and the ability to take messages to the electorate through social media, TV ads can still have impact, experts say.

Lower-than expected spending by the Trump campaign is causing some groups to reforecast their political revenue and depressing stock prices. More important, it highlights the need for adoption of ATSC 3.0. The new broadcasting standard will allow stations to offer zoned, targeted and interactive advertising and maintain their lion’s share of the political advertising dollars.

Nexstar Broadcasting Group has already has taken orders for more than two thirds of its 2016 political ad spending target, CEO Perry Sook said on Wednesday, but he stopped short of raising the goal. The company planned to tell investors at an investment conference later in the day that it was standing by the target for $100 million in political revenue for the year.

Recent polling suggests that the presidential race has tightened, the station group says. “Nevertheless, there can be no assurance that increased spending will materialize given the very unusual nature of this year’s late presidential campaign season.”

Rather than between $649 million and $663 million as it projected in early August, the station group now says total revenue will come in around $638 million as expected political revenue dips from the projected $58 million-$68 million to just $46 million, due in large part to low spending by the Trump campaign.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled Monday that the country’s top election watchdog misinterpreted campaign finance law when it dismissed a progressive group’s complaints against two conservative organizations.

The battleground state advertising landscape continues to be unpredictable. But North Carolina in particular has been surging, increasing 166% in August vs. July (vs. a modest 13% increase in July vs. June) — and spending in the state’s three major media markets in August is actually up dramatically vs. spend in August 2012.

Spending on the presidential race is about a third of what it was four years ago, and the Republican candidate has been slow to invest. It will still be a record year, but under $3 billion.

61% comes from those two sources, with nearly 30% coming from “down-ballot” campaign advertisers; only 10% is from presidential campaigns.

As Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump now starts up a paid TV advertising campaign, he continues to lead in earned media over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. For August, Trump pulled in $509.3 million in earned media compared to Clinton’s $364.2 million, according to mediaQuant. In July — the month in which respective party conventions were held — the race was closer, with Trump getting $573.4 million compared to $539.8 million for Clinton.

Political advertising on local TV is now estimated to total under $3 billion for the year, according to one media analyst — lower than early projections. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst for Pivotal Research Group, says: “If we assume that spending might slow to end up 20% to 30% over 2014 levels — or around 10% over 2012 levels — total spending would end up under $3 billion on a full-year basis.”

Hillary Clinton’s campaign will drop six figures on a new ad buy in Republican-leaning Arizona as she seeks to attack GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in the historically red state. The announcement comes the day after Trump’s hard-line immigration speech in Phoenix, where he put to rest any rumors that he would soften on his signature issue.

After months of being swamped on the swing-state airwaves by Hillary Clinton and her allies, Donald Trump’s campaign this week announced a broad and extensive television advertising campaign that included ads set to run in nearly all the battleground states. But Trump’s actual investment over the next week or so falls far short of his campaign’s claims.

Donald Trump’s campaign will spend more than $10 million in TV ads in the next week or so, marking the mogul’s largest ad buy of the election. The TV spots will begin airing today and will be viewed in nine swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, a master of free publicity, didn’t start running general-election presidential campaign ads until Aug. 19, roughly two months after his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Here are some data snapshots about Trump’s initial burst of broadcast TV advertising.

Hillary Clinton has buried Donald Trump in an avalanche of negative TV ads in an effort to kill off the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign before he starts to fire back. Clinton’s campaign had spent about $60 million on TV ads before Trump went on the air for the first time with a $4 million buy in four swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The money spent on all pro-Clinton advertising had reached $104 million by last week, according to data from NBC News and Advertising Analytics. All pro-Trump advertising has reached about one-ninth of that figure.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have both raised their spending — to an undisclosed degree — on Snapchat, with Clinton buying video ads with a targeted number of views and Trump running an interactive ad that wants users’ email addresses. Nicole Piper reports on Snapchat’s first significant national election ad spend.

The candidates have spent less money than expected on television, with Donald Trump sitting out till last week. But they’ve been funneling money to Twitter, Google and online.

Hillary for America, Democratic Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, has spent some big national TV dollars recently — on NBC’s Rio Olympics. More than half of Clinton’s 2016 total national TV budget so far has been spent on the Rio Games — $15.8 million, according to iSpot.tv. Since the first of the year, the Clinton campaign has spent $26.8 million in national TV advertising, with much of that starting July 1. Donald Trump for President, the Republican candidate’s presidential campaign, has yet to spend any national TV dollars

Trump’s campaign has ordered broadcast TV ads totaling $4 million over the next two weeks in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio. The first spots will air on today. An additional $900,000 worth of cable TV ads in those states has also been placed.

Spending on political advertising during the U.S. presidential election has dropped 60% from 2012, a troubling sign for local TV broadcasters that were counting on a windfall. Since late April, when Donald Trump effectively secured the Republican nomination, $146 million has been spent in the presidential race by all sponsors, compared with $373 million over the same period in 2012, according to an analysis by Ken Goldstein, a Bloomberg Politics polling and advertising analyst.

Political data firms on both sides of the aisle have bolstered their addressable TV capabilities. Today, Democratic data firm TargetSmart and Republican data outfit Data Trust each announced new partnerships with TV data providers. The outcome should be even more TV spots, especially from congressional campaigns, targeted to households of key voter segments than ever before.

Donald Trump this weekend will begin airing general election advertisements, putting an end to an unprecedented advertising gap. Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and other aides told about 50 Capitol Hill Republicans on a conference call Tuesday that he would begin advertisements in five states, according to a congressional source: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania — all places where Trump is trailing solidly.

Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are swamping Republicans who back Donald Trump on television in swing states across the country this week as polls show Clinton taking wide leads. All told, Clinton’s campaign and Democratic groups are spending nearly $9.3 million on television advertisements in seven swing states this week. Two Republican groups that back Trump are spending almost $1.9 million on advertising in five swing states.

She’s spent millions on national television ads, including huge buys in the Olympics. Trump has yet to drop a dime, though several PACs are spending on his behalf. He continues to favor free Twitter posts.

The Democratic presidential nominee is airing $13.6 million in campaign commercials during the Summer Games, seeking to reach the millions of television viewers who can’t skip past the commercials as they watch live coverage of the Olympics. She has the audience to herself, as Trump has yet to air his first paid TV ad of the general election campaign.

The donor network helmed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch is running a new $2 million campaign against Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate Katie McGinty. The campaign is funded by the network’s main political super-PAC, the Freedom Partners Action Fund, and brings the group’s total spending in Pennsylvania to $5.5 million.