Record Spending
Think there was a lot of spending on campaign ads in the 2020 election cycle? You’re right…a record amount, in fact.
But despite 2022 being a mid-term election and not a presidential election…spending will be about the same.
This forecast comes from AdImpact, which tracks such things.
A total of 9 billion dollars was spent on ads in 2020…more than half, 5.3 billion, was spent on broadcast television. The projection is that nearly that much, 8.9 billion, will be spent in the 2022 cycle. And while again half will be spent on broadcast TV, there’s an increasing amount on things like Facebook, chiefly for fundraising ironically enough.
Look at the massive increase in ad spending in the past decade…2.6 billion in 2016, then 4 billion in 2018, 9 billion last year. That’s almost a quadrupling between presidential election cycles.
Part of this is driven by races for governor in 36 of 50 states, including Iowa. A third of the Senate is up, including a seat in Iowa, and clearly control of the chamber is at issue. Same in the House, with all 435 seats on the 2022 ballot and the current majority being razor-thin.
Election cycles are starting earlier than ever, easily overlapping one another…that costs money, and while it’s not surprising to see these Monopoly-money type numbers…it’s a little unsettling.
