Where the political ad dollar goes furthest, by the 2024 numbers

AdImpact tracked a record $11.1 billion in political advertising for the 2023 to 2024 cycle. Broadcast took $5.3 billion. Connected TV, at $2.3 billion and 21% of spending, became the second-largest medium, ahead of digital ($1.6 billion) and linear cable ($1.37 billion). Two-thirds of the money went to 13 states, and Arizona’s $511 million ranked fourth. For 2026, AdImpact projects a record $11.6 billion, with broadcast holding 48% and CTV rising to $2.7 billion, or 23%, as “the fastest-growing media type.” On the programmatic side, Basis Technologies reports that CTV became 50% of political device spend in 2024, that video was 76% of digital investment, and that 48% of digital budgets were spent in the last 30 days before Election Day.

Tech for Campaigns, a Democratic-aligned organization that runs digital for down-ballot and state legislative races, published the cost per thousand impressions on its own 2024 buys, $16.47 on Meta and $3.50 on Google, against the broadcast ($43.35) and cable ($22.10) primetime upfront benchmarks it cites from Media Dynamics. Political advertisers put 36% of their budgets into digital in 2024, against 78% for commercial advertisers. The leak is geographic. A broadcast market is far larger than a legislative or congressional district, and linear TV can’t stop delivering to people who have already voted. Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, analyzed $5.4 billion in 2020 ad spending and found that in House races roughly 75% of TV spending reached voters outside the targeted district, and that about 10% of Democrats’ total ad budget likely went to voters who had already cast a ballot. The Trade Desk’s 2024 survey found more than half of viewers in battleground states, Arizona among them, saw linear TV ads for candidates and issues they couldn’t vote on. Tech for Campaigns’ 2022 report also found that digital shares varied widely between campaigns: Republican Senate candidates put about $22 million, around 5% of their budgets, into Meta and Google, while Democratic Senate candidates put in roughly $100 million, about 10%. Either way, most campaigns still put a small share of their budgets where cost per voter reached is lowest.

Cheaper reach is only worth something if it moves votes, so the write-up has to respect what the research says. Coppock, Hill and Vavreck tested 49 real 2016 presidential ads in 59 experiments on 34,000 people: the average effect was 0.05 points on a five-point favorability scale and 0.7 percentage points on vote choice, with no meaningful difference by tone, sponsor or timing. Kalla and Broockman’s review of 49 field experiments put the best estimate of persuasion from contact and advertising in general elections at zero, with exceptions when candidates take unusually unpopular positions and campaigns invest unusually heavily in finding persuadable voters, or when contact comes early and effects are measured immediately. Two findings matter for the races most of our clients run. Sides, Vavreck and Warshaw found television advertising effects 2.5 to 19 times larger in down-ballot races than in presidential ones. And Hewitt, Broockman, Coppock and colleagues analyzed 617 ads from 51 campaigns tested on more than 500,000 respondents: 2018 down-ballot ads averaged 2.3 points of persuasion versus 0.8 for 2020 presidential ads, and the spread between ads was wide enough that “choosing an above average ad over a below average ad could still easily determine the outcome of a close election.” Turnout work follows the same rule. A 2 million-person randomized test of a real digital persuasion program (Acronym’s $8.9 million social media effort in 2020) found no change in overall turnout but a 0.4-point increase among Biden leaners and a 0.3-point decrease among Trump leaners. Vote.org’s 7.1 million text messages in 2018 raised turnout 0.25 points overall and 0.50 points with positive social-pressure wording, while plain calendar reminders had no measurable effect, and the gains came from voters with vote propensity scores between 10 and 49.

The 2024 Senate race drew about $156 million, and the winning side outspent the other by more than two to one while carrying the state by 2.4 points as the top of the ticket went the other way by more than five. In the House, money bought less. In the First District, David Schweikert won 52 to 48 despite his opponent’s $2.1 million spending edge, and in the Sixth, Juan Ciscomani won by about 11,000 votes with each side spending more than $18 million. Margins are small, and they are won by fit and precision, not by volume.