5 Takeaways for the Last Weekend of Political Ads

We're entering the final weekend of the 2024 election cycle, which also means that we're entering the final weekend of election-related advertising... at least until the 2026 midterms. Due to the close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, it's been a particularly intense cycle for political ads, to the point where a majority of Americans feel overwhelmed, especially those living in key swing states. The good news for those exhausted voters is that election ads will vanish from the airwaves after Nov. 5. But until then, both campaigns are flooding the linear, streaming, and digital space with last-minute pleas for votes. "A quarter of a billion dollars went to [campaign] PACs between Oct. 1 and 16th," notes Keith Norman, vp of political practice at LG Ad Solutions, who monitors political advertising in the CTV space. "Typically, 50-60% of that will go to media, so there are still new ad dollars coming in." We asked Norman—a former news producer who started his career at NBC News—for the five things voters and viewers should know about the last wave of 2024 political ads they'll see this weekend. 1. The big donors came in late According to Norman, the sudden flurry of new ad dollars is largely courtesy of big-ticket donors who had previously held off on throwing their cash into the ring. Chalk that hesitancy up to the summer-into-fall roller coaster that saw Harris replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket and Trump surviving two assassination attempts. "I believe those donors were just watching to see what would happen," Norman says, pointing to how both Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates just gave $50 million to the Harris campaign in late October. "Trump has been running for 100 weeks, and Harris has been running for 14," he adds. "I think the Harris donors were waiting to see if she was going to keep this competitive and if there was a path for her to win." 2. This may be linear's last stand While the Harris campaign is splitting its advertising equally between digital and linear platforms, the Trump team remains largely focused on the latter. Norman agrees that it's safe to assume that has a lot to do with the GOP's voter base, who are more likely to be older and still wedded to their linear viewing habits. At the same time, he's seen evidence suggesting that the Trump campaign's linear-first strategy is also finding some purchase with Latino and African American voters, particularly young men. Drawing on his own experience in Spanish-language media—Norman previously had a seven-year stint at Univision—he says that young voters of color grew up watching broadcast and cable television with their parents and grandparents. "It wouldn't surprise me if those are the reasons why the campaign is leaning into linear more so than you'd expect in 2024," he notes. But Norman also expects that to change when the 2028 presidential election rolls around—and possibly as early as the 2026 mid-terms. "The share of TV viewing will continue to be going in the direction of streaming and ad-supported streaming," he explains, pointing to how broadcast and cable mainstays like sports programming are steadily leaving linear outlets for streaming platforms. "I have to think that by 2028, some of the old guard will accept where the numbers are with viewers and with the voters." 3. Targeting tactics are shifting With early voting underway in many states, Norman has noticed that LG's clients are shifting their targeting strategies with the remaining batches of political ads. "Campaigns targeting likely Republican voters are now targeting likely voters in order to pick up independents or Democrats," he says. "The preferred outcome for all campaigns is to win, but some are also looking to win with certain voters or in certain regions." Norman says that some clients are also taking advantage of the suppression capabilities offered by CTV technology to re-direct ads to those voters they most want to reach. "If someone has already voted or seen the same ads on linear, they're thinking, 'Let's not waste impressions on those voters,'" he explains. 4. Ads are putting issues over party It's widely expected that Harris and Trump will end the race in a near-photo finish, with potentially only a few thousand votes ushering the victor to the Oval Office. The same holds true for many of the down-ballot races, which will likely be decided on razor-thin margins. With that in mind, Norman says that the most recent wave of ads on both sides of the aisle has largely been trying to convince those few thousand voters to pull the lever based on the issues rather than for a specific political party. "Down-ballot, you're seeing candidates from the left talking about border security, and on the right, they're talking about women's freedoms," he observes. "A lot of the ads that I'm seeing aren't even mentioning which party the candidates are with!" 5. Trust matters Throughout this election cycle, legacy media has seen its position as the go-to forum for presidential candidates usurped by social media and podcasters like Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper. But in the ad world, at least, Norman says that working with trusted partners like LG and other established streaming platforms—as opposed to taking a chance on emerging mediums—still matters the most to his clients. "What I'm hearing from clients is that there's no time to be trying new platforms or moving money to untested platforms," he says. That includes social media destinations like X, formerly Twitter, which had set out to earn $100 million from political advertising this year but reportedly only earned a fraction of that, according to The Financial Times. "I think it's about what platforms deliver an audience, reach, and tactics to fulfill strategies," Norman says. "Streaming checks a lot of those boxes."

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5 Takeaways for the Last Weekend of Political Ads

New ad dollars are coming in from big donors, and linear may be making its last stand

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Ethan Alter

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