This Ad’s for You (Not Your Neighbor)
The trend is growing so fast that political ads on streaming services are expected to generate $1.44 billion — or about 15 percent — of the projected $9.7 billion on ad spending for the 2022 election cycle, according to a report from AdImpact, an ad tracking company. That would for the first time put streaming on par with political ad spending on Facebook and Google.
The State of the 2022 Midterm Elections
With the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.
- Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.
- Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.
- Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.
- Pennsylvania Senate Race: In one of his most extensive interviews since having a stroke, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, said he was fully capable of handling a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.
The quick proliferation of the streaming political messages has prompted some lawmakers and researchers to warn that the ads are outstripping federal regulation and oversight.
For example, while political ads running on broadcast and cable TV must disclose their sponsors, federal rules on political ad transparency do not specifically address streaming video services. Unlike broadcast TV stations, streaming platforms are also not required to maintain public files about the political ads they sold.
The result, experts say, is an unregulated ecosystem in which streaming services take wildly different approaches to political ads.
“There are no rules over there, whereas, if you are a broadcaster or a cable operator, you definitely have rules you have to operate by,” said Steve Passwaiter, a vice president at Kantar Media, a company that tracks political advertising.
The boom in streaming ads underscores a significant shift in the way that candidates, party committees and issue groups may target voters. For decades, political campaigns have blanketed local broadcast markets with candidate ads or tailored ads to the slant of cable news channels. With such bulk media buying, viewers watching the same show at the same time as their neighbors saw the same political messages.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/business/custom-political-ads.html