The news: Political advertising has become big enough that it’s propping up the overall ad market.
- In the first half of 2022, Basis Technologies, which handles programmatic ads for political campaigns, saw a more than four-fold rise in political ad spending compared with 1H 2020, with all clients' average spending going up.
- The second half of election years always sees a significant bump in political spending (Basis saw 84% of 2020’s political ad spend in the latter half). With more primary elections taking place later than usual this year, that could skew expenditures even further in the second half.
Who benefits: States projected to spend the most this year, according to AdImpact, include California ($755 million), Pennsylvania ($609 million), Illinois ($606 million), Arizona ($600 million), and Georgia ($575 million).
How we got here: The 2020 election cycle was the most expensive ever, according to OpenSecrets.
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According to Tech for Campaigns, advertisers spent $2.3 billion on Facebook and Google ads and $1.5 billion on other digital ads. For perspective, that’s around 10.5% of all advertising and 39% of all political digital advertising expenditures.