• by Wayne Friedman , September 30, 2021

This comes after a more aggressive number of $8.9 billion from AdImpact (formerly Advertising Analytics) -- a projection that would be three times the last midterm election in 2018, which was $2.97 billion.

Both projections would be near or very close to the overall champ -- the soaring record take of nearly $9.0 billion set just last year for the 2020 Presidential year elections.

Driving this high estimate, says AdImpact, is the “widespread use of Facebook as a fundraising tool has allowed campaigns to quickly and easily reach a highly polarized electorate.”

This allows “candidate and issue groups to fund-raise with greater ease than ever before.”

Kantar/CMAG is not as aggressive in its projections, due to what is believed to be nonrecurring advertising spikes seen in 2020.

Speaking at the TVB conference on Thursday, Steve Passwaiter, vice president/growth and strategy of Kantar/CMAG, explains there will be an absence of money from Presidential ad spending.

In late 2019/early 2020 then presidential candidate, Michael Bloomberg spent, according to reports, around $1 billion in political advertising.

In addition, Passwaiter says next year’s marketplace will not have the high spending of Donald Trump running for the top political office.

Passwaiter also says there will be the absence of the unexpected 2020 political ad-revenue spike in Georgia (just under $500 million) due to two high-profile Senatorial runoff races in January.

Kantar sees $3.8 billion going to broadcast; $1.2 billion to digital media (mostly Facebook and Google); $1.4 billion for cable TV/satellite TV platforms; $1.2 billion for OTT/CTV and $215 million for radio.

AdImpact touts higher levels overall for each media channel, especially for broadcast.

Broadcast TV -- mostly all local TV -- will see $4.57 billion; cable TV, $1.34 billion; digital media, $1.29 billion; and radio, $220 million.

Just like Kantar, AdImpact estimates show sharply higher revenue for CTV -- $1.48 billion.

AdImpact says CTV political ad revenue registered a virtually zero/negligible amount in the 2020 presidential election year.

AdImpact says most of the 2022 political money will go to down ballot races -- state, local, and other contests -- $2.51 billion; Senate races, $2.38 billion; with Governors contests, $2.33 billion; and U.S. House, $1.67 billion.