Political ad spend is nearly triple what it was in 2016

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Key stat: Political ad spend will hit $12.32 billion this year, according to our December 2023 forecast. That’s nearly three times what it was in 2016.

Beyond the chart:

• Political ad spend will impact other segments of advertising as well, considering ad buys from political groups mean less inventory for everybody else.
• Political advertising is shifting toward digital, as noted in our US Political Ad Spending Forecast 2024 report. And 45.0% of digital political ad spend will go to connected TV this year.
• With generative AI presenting the risk of misinformation and disinformation, advertisers will face pressure to establish clear AI policies.

Use this chart:

• Demonstrate the impact of the 2024 election on advertising.

More like this:

• Ready or not, the $12 billion election is here
• AI, election, and streaming consolidation define media planning in 2024
• Social media is still a hub for news and politics
• Social media is the No. 1 source of disinformation, according to US internet users

Note: Digital ad spending includes banner ads and other (static display ads such as Facebook's News Feed Ads and X's Promoted Posts), classified ads, email (embedded ads only), mobile messaging (SMS, MMS, and P2P messaging), rich media (including in-stream and outstream video ads), search ads (including contextual text links, paid inclusion, paid listings, and SEO), sponsorships, lead generation (referrals); rich media data for 2017-2022 includes in-stream and outstream video ads; data prior to 2017 includes only outstream video ads.

Methodology: Estimates are based on the analysis of various elements related to the ad spending market, including macro-level economic conditions, historical trends of the advertising market, historical trends of each medium in relation to other media, reported revenues from major ad publishers, estimates from other research firms, data from benchmark sources, consumer media consumption trends, consumer device usage trends, and eMarketer interviews with executives at ad agencies, brands, media publishers, and other industry leaders.