It is election day 2025 in New York City, and that means primaries and key state elections for the US midterm election cycle is right around the corner.
Now it's set to be the most expensive non-presidential campaign season in history.
Media firm Assembly projects over $10 billion will be spent across Senate Governor, House, and state legislator races, a record for a midterm year.
And while presidential elections make it relatively easy to predict where political.
Dollars will flow midterms are more complex, with 33 Senate races, 36 governor races, and 435 House races and over 6000 state and local races, not all campaigns will receive the same spending.
The big question for advertisers where will the money land and when?
Well, joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange to weigh in is Tyler Goldberg, director of political strategy at Assembly.
Tyler, welcome.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me, Remy.
Always great to be here.
Well, it is election day in New York City, so a lot of moving parts to keep our eyes on.
But when it comes to political spending forecasted for next year, it's over $10 billion.
So give us an idea of what we can expect in terms of inventory as well as what commercial advertisers out there can expect.
Well, it's interesting because as you said, presidential election years, it's much easier to project where and when spending is going to go.
In a midterm year you don't really have that backbone of, oh, these are our 7 big swing states.
We know they're all going to see a certain amount of money.
The problem with forecasting for midterm years is that you're talking about 5 or 6 different election cycles all funneled into one.
So our first big primary of the year is probably going to be in Texas.
That's coming up in March.
So you know, 4 months from right now when you wouldn't necessarily think of us as being in the midst of the 2026 election cycle.
And let's talk about the cultural impact because we know that political ads do influence consumer.
So brands out there, how can they get ready?
It's fascinating to me because in 2022, and I know we've talked about this before, due to economic concerns, Republican consumers were significantly more likely to cut back on discretionary spending than their Democratic counterparts because at the time all the messaging was about inflation.
Democrats were in power and so that was really a Republican response to that.
Our expectation is that that will be inverted in 2026.
So if your brand that is trying to reach more typically liberal leaning constituencies, younger folks, folks who are living in urban areas, things like that, a more diverse coalition, you have to pay attention to the fact that your consumers are going to be getting $10 billion worth of political spending directed at them, telling them that the economy is bad.
That will have an effect on how they choose to spend their money.
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because you and I here we are at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City.
The USA is a big nation.
So when we're talking about regional intensity, what strategies are advertisers actually looking at to navigate this?
That's a great point as well, because this $10 billion it's not evenly distributed across 210 media markets.
In fact, we're looking at about 150 that are. to see moderate to intense levels of political spend.
About 4 years ago at Assembly we developed a tool called the Assembly Market Intensity Index that projects out where and when political spend will be at its height, that helps our brand clients prepare for that because it's all about sort of taking stock as you said, it's election day today.
It's important everyone should go out and vote, but then you Have to start thinking and preparing for 2026.
Yeah, and I do want to get a breakdown of what we're talking about when we're thinking ads because we're all hyper connected nowadays with our digital devices and let's say we're streaming content, we might see ads as well.
So what does it look like across the board?
Sure, so we're expecting somewhere in the range of 55 to 60% of spending will be on linear television.
That's Broadcaster cable, you know, it could be another 20-25% on digital on streaming.
The interesting point there is that not all platforms accept political advertising, so it really is consumer dependent because I may be sitting watching certain content and getting political ads 50 times a day, but someone else just based on how they stream, where they stream, they may not see any at all.
Yeah, so based on what you just said, Tyler, if it's really important for brands to understand their exposure to this political cycle, what steps are necessary for them and why?
So the first thing is going to be you have to work with partners who understand the political landscape.
They understand the where, when, why, and how political spending will affect the commercial advertising landscape.
On the other hand, you also need to plan.
We said you should be preparing right now.
Those red lights are blinking.
This will be the most expensive non-presidential election in history, and I think it's safe to say that we've seen our last sub $10 billion election cycle.
That means this problem, if you want to call it a problem, it's not going away anytime soon.
So those plans that you develop now are going to be just as important in 2028, just as important in 2030.
And finally, Tyler, before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here, but it is election day here in New York City, and I'm sure you've been watching the landscape very closely when it comes to advertising and what different brands are doing out there.
So what are some lessons that you've learned from this campaign cycle?
It's very interesting because New York is a prime example of Being a ton of spending in the June primary sort of a lull and then coming back in the fall, and that brings us back to sort of the main point of all this, which is you can't get complacent because I think it would have been very easy as a brand or as an advertiser to go, well, the primary is over, it's the end of June, on to the next thing.
We've seen in the past month, millions and millions of dollars have flooded the New York City market on the mayor's race.
It will be interesting to see sort of what effect that has on the outcome of the race, but also what effect that had on advertisers right here in the city.
Yeah, it was really interesting to see the record breaking early voting as well.
So we'll see the results later on, hopefully, and we'll know sooner rather than later.
Tyler, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
