It’s a political year – especially in the advertising sense – but some of the biggest buzz at the moment revolves around a presidential candidate lagging distantly in the polls: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
That’s because his political action committee (PAC), the American Values Super PAC, ran a Super Bowl ad that borrowed heavily from a 1960 TV spot for his uncle’s 1960 presidential bid.
It was a bold, and unusual, move, not the least of which reasons CBS was said to be charging $7 million for a 30-second spot -- but also because political advertising is typically spent at the local level, and with good reason.
As the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill is famously quoted as saying, “All politics is local.”
What did the pro-Kennedy Super PAC get for its estimated $7 million? That’s where things get even more noteworthy: According to Nielsen, Super Bowl LVIII drew an estimated 123.7 million viewers; it averaged 120.3 million viewers on CBS alone, making it the largest audience for a single-network telecast to date. An additional 2.3 million viewers watched the Spanish-language broadcast on Univision, and 1.2 million watched the kid-friendly cablecast on Nickelodeon and Nick-at-Nite – which reportedly sold out all their inventory as well.
While the Super Bowl’s out-of-home viewing, in bars and other establishments, was not broken out by Nielsen, iSpot.tv estimates it was a healthy average of 25.9 million viewers, per an analysis by highly regarded advertising expert Brad Adgate, underscoring the Big Game’s powerful communal-viewing nature.
In fact, per Nielsen, the NFL accounted for 93 of top 100 most-watched US broadcasts in 2023. So, whether you were rooting for the Chiefs or the 49ers, the big winner for this – and every -- TV season is…. The NFL!
The pro-Kennedy Super PAC ad was relatively rare in another sense, at least for this political season: Presidential-race ads have yet to fully ramp up. Both Pres. Biden and former Pres. Trump, and their own associated PACs, have been holding their powder; needless to say, they’re prohibitive front-runners in their respective primaries.
That’s not to say it won’t be another stellar year for political advertising; AdImpact projects presidential spending to reach $2.7 billion this cycle, out of a projected total for the 2023-2024 election cycle of $10.2 billion across broadcast, cable, radio, satellite, digital, and CTV -- representing a 13% increase over the previous record of $9.02 billion set during the 2019-2020 election cycle.
We anticipate growing clarity on this season’s political-ad landscape after March 5, the all-important Super Tuesday on which primary voters in multiple states cast their ballots. In any case, as with every political cycle, we anticipate strong activity up and down the ballot. And, as always, the lion’s share is projected to go to linear TV, while CTV is coming on strong as a complement.
So, all politics is local – except those rare occasions when a Super PAC has the kind of money and shoot-for-the-fences mindset to spend on a Super Bowl spot.
Similarly, when one discusses sports betting, the familiar phrase “The House always wins” comes to mind. Yet, in terms of audience reach … the NFL always wins.
And, in terms of political advertising with maximum impact, television always wins.
Who’s your candidate?
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