I’ve been harping about election campaign spending and its impact on marketing expectations this year for a bit now. So here’s an Election Day post running through it all again. Go vote!
2024 is projected to be a record-breaking year, surpassing $12 billion in political ad spend.
Seventy percent of that windfall will be spent after Labor Day
The Harris campaign has instead focused its digital spending on larger platforms like Google and Meta, where it has spent over $280mn this year. The vast amount of political spending on those platforms — already more than $1.5bn
For context, in the second half of October, political parties spent well over $2.5 million per day on YouTube. For Meta, it’s closer to $1 million per day.
Why won’t I shut up about this?
Because this level of spend puts intense pressure on the ad auctions and inventories of the utilized platforms. These are mostly net-new dollars flowing in at a rapid clip. For most brands this means higher ad costs and lower return reducing the efficiency of their spend.
Emarketer curated some reporting that includes:
- brands reporting ad costs increasing 2-3x in the final weeks of the election
- surging TV ad costs, especially in swing states
Of course, the impact on marketing budgets is just the beginning.
This messaging overload overwhelms consumers, raises anxiety levels, and increases ad fatigue (who else is sick of all the election messaging you get bombarded with?). Which can all lead to a “pre-election slump” in consumer spending. Of course, this theoretical slump is not universal—I bet alcohol sales and the like are doing just fine.
But the bigger the price tag, the bigger the impact.
In times of uncertainty, people sit on their cash. They purchase discount or off-brand. They hold off on large luxury purchases made in celebration or confidence.
Election Day itself is no exception, more the final culmination of the building gravitational pull. A black hole that will collapse into itself tomorrow (right? please?!).
the election is fraying the nerves of the electorate, with nearly 70% of US adults calling it a significant source of stress
According to a recent Ipsos poll of roughly 1,000 US adults, 47% said election stress is causing them to spend less and save more
Meanwhile, the scale of an Election Day productivity slowdown could be staggering. An analysis by Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that productivity losses could reach $3.5 billion per hour
Your marketing and messaging is like a fire, it needs a steady source of fuel to keep burning—to act as a beacon to the people it's for. The election is a vacuum, it sucks all the oxygen (and attention) out, making it all but impossible for that fire to keep burning without any changes.
