• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 19, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- MediaPost's Marketing Politics conference got off on a media-mix note here Thursday, with emcee Steve Smith presenting new data from PQ Media showing some remarkable growth for all media -- but especially streaming -- in terms of political ad spending between 2022 and 2024.

With a 488% jump between the bi-annual cycles, streaming -- and by extension, CTV, OTT, etc. -- clearly is the fastest-growing political media sector.

That said, linear broadcast and cable TV still represent about half of all political ad spending -- and by the way, they had healthy growth rates too: 29% and 77%, respectively.

Ad-supported streaming was the focus of an afternoon panel I moderated with political media pros from both sides of the aisle, who agreed that it currently represents a frustrating paradox, because there's a relatively limited amount of premium streaming ad inventory even being made available to political advertisers, but the medium now accounts for about half of all viewing. And for some important audience targets, even more so.

On the plus side, Smart Media Group COO Paul Winn noted that political is at least getting more access to premium streaming inventory than many Beltway insiders expected just a couple of years ago, when most thought streaming would be mostly subscriber-supported revenue models.

While the big dogs alike Netflix and Amazon Prime still don't accept political ad dollars, that could change down the road when there is more ad option subscribers -- and more inventory -- available.

Just this week, I reported on new estimates from New Street Research revising their ad revenue projections for Netflix this year up by $700 million to $2.2 billion.

So things are moving fast.