Phony imagery isn’t new to campaigns. What has changed is that synthetic media has become far easier to create with the rollout of so-called generative AI systems that can quickly transform simple inputs into sophisticated-looking videos, photos, music and text. That has left campaign officials bracing for 2024 to usher in a level of digital creation and proliferation unlike any previous election season now that millions of users have access to such tools.
A group of House Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Thursday to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that eliminated restrictions on corporate campaign spending. The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC case prohibited the government from restricting political campaign spending by companies, nonprofit organizations and unions. This amendment, if passed, would allow Congress and state governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on campaign funding, including restricting corporations from spending “unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.”
Democratic candidates and left-leaning groups raised $1.5 billion through ActBlue over the last three months — a record-smashing total that reveals the overwhelming financial power small-dollar donors have unleashed up and down the ballot ahead of the 2020 election.
Co-opting the “clean up Washington” mantra of the current Republican President and the “by the people, for the people” language of a former Republican President, House Democrats on Friday officially unveiled their first bill of the new session, the For the People Act (H.R. 1), which would, among many other things, boost campaign ad disclosures on TV and extend them to paid online ads.
A major super PAC with ties to House GOP leadership is reserving about $48 million in general election ads as it looks to protect Republicans’ majority during a tough cycle. The Congressional Leadership Fund announced that $38 million of that investment will be for television spots on both broadcast and cable, while the other $10 million will be used for digital ads.
The drawn-out primary season means candidates are concentrating dollars in a few key states rather than starting to advertising nationally. But attacks on Trump may spark more spending.
Exclusives
The 2016 presidential election could cost as much as $5 billion, according to top fundraisers and bundlers who are already predicting it will more than double the 2012 campaign’s price tag. Behind-the-scenes jockeying to raise big bucks from bundlers connected to super-PACs and third-party groups is well underway, even with no top-tier candidates officially in the race.
The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity will use a grant of nearly $3 million to take a closer look at the special-interest groups spending money in state elections. The grant will sustain the project for three years, and CPI hopes to secure additional funding to sustain the reporting beyond that time frame. The center will launch a website devoted to the project in September. John Dunbar, deputy executive editor of CPI, will oversee the initiative.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s re-election campaign has purchased $1 million worth of advertising time with TV stations in New York’s five biggest media markets. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.
Has Political Ad Spending Hit A Ceiling? No
Despite record political spending in swing states, there is still room for growth in some.
Behind The Record Political Ad Dollars
Ohio, Florida and Virginia got the biggest share of the projected $2.6 billion spent on local TV, most of that in the final weeks. Peter Leitzinger, analyst at SNL Kagan, talks about the impact of Citizens United, how 2012 fared compared to his earlier expectations and what political ads have done for radio.
The conservative American Future Fund is pouring over $5 million into television and radio ads in the battleground states, including significant investments in Pennsylvania and Michigan TV.
The top markets for ad buys are Denver; Las Vegas; Tampa, Fla.; Cleveland, Ohio; Orlando, Fla.; Washington, D.C.; Miami; Columbus, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio and Norfolk, Va., according to the data from Kantar Media.
A possibly potent kind of super PAC is proliferating in the closing weeks of the campaign, transforming Congressional races with a barrage of outside money.
Media General CEO Marshall Morton: “With this transaction, we complete the transformation of Media General’s business model to one focused on broadcast television and digital media. We believe our future prospects are strong, based on operating 18 top-ranked local television stations in growing and important markets, mostly in the Southeast.” The company has revised its political ad revenue estimate for 2012 upward to $57 million-$58 million.
Though earlier media estimates had presidential challenger Mitt Romney ahead of President Barack Obama in drumming up donations for media spending, Obama has been buying more TV ads than the Republican candidate — at almost double the rate.
In vital battleground states, huge numbers of presidential ads are airing on TV stations that are not required to post to the FCC’s online political ad database.
The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce says Spanish-language advertising is a small fraction of overall campaign spending, even in states with large Hispanic populations such as California and Florida.
PAC and issue spending are squeezing inventory, but other categories including restaurants and auto are still getting on the air, at higher premiums.
Washington, D.C.: Flooded With Politicals
There’s always a lot of political advertising in Washington, D.C., but it has skyrocketed as the November election nears with hot races in neighboting Maryland and Virginia. That has led to tight conditions on television with rising prices and very few deals available.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is upping its investment in the Nevada Senate race, adding $508,000 in statewide broadcast and cable ads starting Friday,
Mitt Romney has slapped down about $360,000 for his first week of Wisconsin TV ads, signaling a serious if not overwhelming play for the traditionally Democratic-leaning state. A source tracking the 2012 air war said Romney has reserved $361,216 on broadcast TV statewide from Sept. 12 to Sept. 18.
Stations stand to lose a lot of money with Rep. Todd Akin defying pleas from the GOP establishment — including Gov. Mitt Romney — to abandon his campaign.
There will be no TV advertising on Sept. 11 from the presidential candidates to honor the victims of the attacks in 2001. They will honor a request to have an ad moratorium on that day.
A Candidate Whose Ad Is Never Off The Air
Linda Lingle, the Republican nominee for Senate in Hawaii, has turned a cable channel into a 24-hour advertisement for her campaign.
The president’s team plunked down more than $181,000 in ad time on Tampa-area network affiliates for the last week of August, to ensure that the president isn’t completely out of the spotlight when Mitt Romney is crowned as the GOP standard-bearer.
Whether you’re watching Days of Our Lives, the Today Show, or the Olympics closing ceremonies on NBC next week, you’ll see an ad from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS super PAC. Crossroads will pay steeply for the privilege — about $50,000 for the Olympics spots. And they’re buying a lot of spots. So far this month, Crossroads has spent nearly $1 million at three local TV stations.
The GOP independent-spending behemoth American Crossroads will launch a new wave of Senate ads totaling over $7 million in TV time, three strategists say. The ads start this Wednesday and will run through Aug. 21, targeting Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Virginia. The price tag is about $7.2 million.
When it comes to political advertising, the Roanoke-Lynchburg, Va., television market is the hottest in the country. A record $6.5 million has been spent or budgeted already, providing a financial boon to area stations.
The cost of running a single television advertisement has jumped in key markets across the country as candidates, party committees, and independent groups race to get their advertisements on the airwaves. Because the television market is finite and supply does not increase along with demand, prices spike as inventory shrinks.
Political Ad Spending So Far: $648 Million
The election is a little more than three months away, and so far more than half a billion has been spent on TV advertising. From now until the election, another $2.5 billion will be spent, saturating markets such as Los Angeles and Cleveland, Ohio, where spending is already past the $20 million point.
Could Mitt Romney really be ceding a big Olympics stage to President Obama? In a deal with NBCUniversal, the Obama campaign has placed a $6 million national Olympics ad buy comprising running a primetime spot 15 straight nights on NBC, beginning Friday during the Opening Ceremony.
The results of a new study to be released today by professors at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania show that 86% of respondents did not want political campaigns to tailor ads to their interests.
This election year, political ads are using more footage from TV news programs, a practice journalists decry but have little power to curtail.
resident Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney — as well as their leading Super PAC supporters — have temporarily yanked their ads in the state following the theater shootings.
The Republican National Committee appears poised to begin running television ads in swing-state New Hampshire, reserving about $221,000 of airtime, according to a source.
Some $17.7 million has been spent through June 24 to buy air time for political commercials on Cleveland television stations. That trails political ad spending in only one other American city, Los Angeles, where candidates and outside groups have spent $20.2 million.
Cable Nabs A Bigger Slice Of Political Pie
Its share will rise to 9.5% of all money spent this year, $938 million, behind only broadcast TV and ahead of radio.
