TV Stations Maintained Political Ad Share

Kantar's media analyst Evan Tracey disagrees with the notion that TV stations' role as the chief outlet for political advertising is shrinking.

TV stations captured 80% of the nearly $3 billion spent in campaigning and issue advertising this year. But to the extent money moved from broadcasting to other media was solely because broadcasting could not meet all the demand. The market was "driven by a supply-and-demand equation where you actually probably had more money than there was broadcast TV to buy." According to Tracey, electronic mass media attracted between $2.7 billion and $2.8 billion in political spending. If outdoor and direct mail are added in, the total spending swells to nearly $3 billion, a record year. Of that, TV stations accounted for $2.4 billion. When the stations spots "started to get sold out or the pricing was going up too high to keep up [with] the demand ... what happened is you started having a lot of this money that was looking for a new home.