The cases for and against investing in CTV during the presidential election cycle

AdImpact estimated that $1.1 billion of political investment had been spent on CTV ads between Jan. 1, 2023, and Sept. 5 of this year. WPP media network GroupM, which also includes categories such as direct mail in its projections, estimates that total political ad spend will reach $15.4 billion in 2024. Five percent is projected to flow to CTV. (The network made its most recent projection in June.)

Why does that matter for advertisers? Well, because most marketers are at least a little skittish about their expensively made spots showing up next to political messages. A survey of marketers conducted by Forrester in the fourth quarter of 2023 found 82% of U.S. consumer marketers were worried about promoting their brands during the presidential election. There haven’t been many reasons since then for marketers to relax.

Does that mean they should steer clear of CTV until after election day? And, by consequence, will those pre-election nerves translate into a spending slowdown?

The case against spending on CTV during the election

With election day only a few weeks away, the volume on political advertising is being turned up. Media buyers predict that political ad spend will increase by 10 times month over month, and they’ve noted that approximately $3 billion has been spent throughout the first 10 months of the 2024 campaign cycle and that $10 billion is expected to be spent in the last four months.

That’s a lot of messaging, a lot of issues to keep an eye on — and a lot of potential landmines for brands to watch out for. Are the colors used in your creative suggestive of a given candidate’s campaign materials? Does the language in your latest spot evoke a campaign slogan? Perhaps, the argument goes, it’s best to hold back for the next eight weeks.

After all, the lion’s share of political ad spend is being thrown at key states in the presidential battle: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Michigan. To step back from buying ads in the designated market areas that overlap with contentious races would certainly put some clear water between brands and the presidential race.

Furthermore, as political spending increases, so will the price of CTV inventory. “It does kind of put a floor under CPMs. You’re not going to be able to come in and execute at your bottom dollar,” said Mica Hansen, evp and director of political sales at Locality, an ad tech vendor that specializes in selling local streaming and linear inventory.

That factor sometimes drives marketers to consider shifting campaign activity away from the busiest parts of the political calendar, such as party primaries in the late winter or the final fortnight of the election itself, according to media buyers.

The case for spending on CTV during the election

For those worried about their ads running adjacent to political messages, there are sizable safe havens. Amazon and Netflix, for example, have both sworn off political ads.

Certain smart TV manufacturers have also fenced off political messaging. LG Ad Solutions, which provides media inventory and measurement services to brands and media agencies on behalf of electronics manufacturer LG, doesn’t allow campaign or issue-based political ads on its home screen inventory.

“We do accept non-issue advertising, non-candidate advertising … [messaging] that isn’t necessarily going to impact the viewer experience, which our company protects and is very mindful of,” said Keith Norman, vp of sales and political practice at LG Ads.

Furthermore, the concentration of political ad spend in a handful of states means that, for majority of the the U.S., adjacency risks for brands are lower. “If you live in Boise, Idaho, you are not watching political spots right now,” said Hansen.

But media buyers note that there’s no hard evidence to suggest consumers actually change their opinions regarding brands just because their ads are witnessed in the same vicinity as political messaging. And with elections every two years, it’s not as if American consumers aren’t used to campaign ads showing up on their screens.

Marketers that act to keep their brands far from political messages might simply be taking an unnecessary vow of silence — and forgoing, in the form of CTV, a powerful advertising tool.

Norman, who previously held positions at NBC, CBS and MSNBC, said he’d observed advertisers express fewer concerns about CTV ads running adjacent to political messaging than they had done when linear was the only game in town.

“There hasn’t been as much of a need for separation in recent years,” he said. Demand for CTV, Norman added, was outpacing marketer concerns: “I can’t explain why other than the demand is so high for this type of advertising that ad separation isn’t necessarily deliverable because the demand is high and inventory is perhaps limited in some on some platforms,” he said.

In any case, those within the CTV space argue that marketers can allay concerns by utilizing CTV’s scope for greater measurement and control. “Brand safety concerns around CTV can be addressed by real-time audience forecasting, data utilization and contextual relevance,” Cameron Miille, CRO of Publica by IAS, told Digiday in an email.

“The data that’s available via streaming, enables brands to understand more who’s watching and how they can better target and strategize how to drive sales with smaller customer segments,” said Tara Franceschini, head of industry strategy, media and entertainment at Liveramp.

GroupM’s projections don’t foresee any stall in consumer ad spend on CTV this year. It estimates that by the end of 2024, CTV ad spend in the U.S. will have risen 20.7% compared to the year before, to $38.3 billion​​.

And Miille said he hasn’t seen brands pull investment back from CTV. “At Publica, we have seen the investment in advertiser spend on CTV steadily continue to rise,” he said.