• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 17, 2017

First and foremost, lower TV spending in 2016 political advertising may simply be a function of better media buying, said Ben Angle, senior media buyer-national media research at Planning & Placement, during the Marketing: Politics conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday morning.

“In terms of TV being down, I think you really have to attribute it to master negotiators beating the stations down,” said Angle.

Another factor was simply leveraging the TV calendar to commit buys during softer rate-card periods -- “booking in June, July -- or even, in some cases, May -- to get the best rate.”

Angle said he did not really see a fundamental shift in the political media mix, and attributed most of the dollar-share changes to more effective and efficient TV buying.

“There’s more to it than just people not spending money in TV,” he explained.

That said, Elizabeth Kalmbach, vice president-group media direct at KSM Media, said TV’s share of political media budgets reflects what’s going on in all categories.

“We have to go with media consumption habits,” she said, adding: “That’s happening across-the-board, not just in political.”