Inline’s Political Blog Series

1.7.20 | Colleen Madden & Pat Connor

It’s January 2020, and right behind the New Year’s resolutions and remembering to write the date correctly, comes chatter around the 2020 election. Those of us political junkies have been tuning in for months, but with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, it is going to be increasingly difficult to ignore the 2020 elections and the impact of the elections across the media industry.

At Inline Media, we have two unique perspectives on the political media landscape. COO Pat Connor comes from the sales side, after spending over 30 years at iHeart radio, eventually as Market President. VP of Strategy Colleen Madden spent over a decade as a political media buyer and strategist. Here are some of their thoughts on the “political season.”

Pat Connor

“Inventory is tight. We are forecasting an onslaught of political advertising this year.” Every two years marketers hear some version of this from just about every media vendor in the United States, or at least in swing states. According to Kantar’s Media Analysis Group, political campaigns will spend a record $6 billion on advertising in 2020. That is a 14.3% increase over the last mid-term elections and a whopping 37.9% increase over the 2016 presidential election (and the season begins earlier every year).

Some things to remember when it comes to political:

1.     Qualified political candidates, both federal and non-federal are guaranteed the lowest unit rates (LUR). This means political candidates get the very best rate or lower rate than the very best commercial advertiser currently receives.

2.    PACs, issue advertisers, and advertising around amendments and ballot initiatives do not qualify as a candidate “use,” so they pay much higher rates than normal just to make sure their message is being heard. This is where the bulk of the $6 billion normally falls.

3.    All political is cash up front. Radio and TV stations complain about inventory issues, but they love the avalanche of revenue coming their way.

What that means for all of us “regular advertisers” is the “call.” The call from TV and radio reps alerting us to preempted spots or higher rates or both just so that our messages and ads can be cleared or run as ordered. The good news is that political happens only every other year and on election night…all those advertising political messages go out of business.

Colleen Madden

It’s interesting getting experiences on both sides of the aisle, and by aisle, I mean that of political buying, and good old commercial media placement. In my days as a political media buyer, the Political Broadcast Catechism was our Bible. We’d memorize FCC rulings on equal opportunity, LUR, and reasonable access. We’d pull all-nighters fueled by coffee and snacks and negotiate 2,000 points a week without blinking (if that means nothing to you, trust me, it’s a lot). We’d think nothing of placing millions of dollars in media (that always needed to start tomorrow, or if it’s digital, today), 11th hour traffic changes, and handling cease and desists from stations over ad content.

Commercial buying is, well, quieter. We can place media months in advance, place whole quarters and even years at a time, and actually post our buys to make sure they ran correctly. We can incorporate promotions and events into a media mix and have the luxury of time to craft and execute strategic media plans. From a commercial buyer’s standpoint, political spend comes in, hogs all of the inventory, drives up costs, and makes everyone dream for a post-election time not saturated with political ads. Luckily, we commercial buyers have some tricks up our sleeve to get around the slog that is the political window. The buyers and planners at Inline Media work with vendors across broadcast, digital, and everything in between to help our clients stand out in the clutter of airwaves inundated with partisan messages.

Over the next couple of months, Inline Media will be doing a series of blog posts around “political season.” We’ll examine the impact on inventory for traditional and digital media and take a close look at how data is used in the programmatic digital and video space. Stay tuned!

[1] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/337563/2020-political-spending-to-hit-6-billion-digital.html