No One Hates Political Ads More Than Car Dealers

As what promises to be the most expensive presidential election in US history heats up, one constituency is dreading the coming barrage of political advertising perhaps more than any other: car dealers. In some battleground markets, a presidential race can soak up a third or more of local broadcast television advertising time, crowding out auto dealers, who are typically the biggest buyers of local TV ad time, according to a Bloomberg analysis. That shift, according to the analysis of data from Kantar Media Intelligence, CMAG, and Kelley Blue Book, can hurt sales.

Take Cleveland (OH), for example, a major battleground in the 2012 campaign. The number of car ads that ran on local broadcast stations in October 2012, the final month of the race, fell to 4,553, a 16 percent drop compared to the same month a year earlier, while the number of political ads soared to more than 27,000 that month alone, according to the analysis. Actual car and light truck sales rose just 5 percent even as the nation rose 16 percent, according to data from Kelley Blue Book. The race for the White House has already pumped more than an estimated $98 million into local broadcast television advertising, according to data from CMAG, adding up to more than 95,000 ads mostly in Iowa and New Hampshire, which kick off the presidential nominating process in Feb.