The political ad wars are still being fought over the airwaves even as digital gains share

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While advertising dollars increasingly shift toward streaming and digital platforms, the political ad war is still being fought over the free airwaves.

Broadcast television companies are set to capture the greatest portion of political ad spend ahead of the midterm elections, according to advertising intelligence company AdImpact.

The 2025-26 election cycle is forecast to be the most expensive on record, with a predicted $11.6 billion in total spending. That's higher than the $11.2 billion spent on advertising during the 2024 presidential election cycle and the $8.9 billion spent during the 2022 midterms.

An estimated $5.6 billion of advertising spend ahead of the midterms, or 48%, is expected to go to broadcast companies, AdImpact found.

"It's still a local game," said StoneX Equity Research Analyst Daniel Kurnos in an interview. "Yes, there are national elections, but you have to win counties. And if you have to win counties, you have to reach voters in these counties."

Broadcast audiences — those tuning into NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox or their local affiliate stations — are generally more politically active, Kurnos said: "You cater to the demos that vote. You cater to the votes that matter."

That makes political advertising one of the last bastions of broadcast's dominance.

While broadcasters are expected to capture roughly half of political advertising spending this cycle, they account for just 7.7% of the more than $470 billion in general advertising spend forecast for this year in the United States, according to Magna data published by S&P Global in July.

Terry Nelson, a founding partner of Plus Communications and the national political director for former President George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, told CNBC that broadcast spots allow political strategists to reach large numbers of voters "as efficiently as we can from a cost perspective."

Though cord-cutting has reshaped the TV landscape as customers drop cable, broadcast remains free and broadly accessible.

Broadcast, which transmits local news, sports, classic game shows like "Wheel of Fortune" and national networks, captured more hours of television use than cable in July, according to Nielsen's most recent monthly streaming report, The Gauge. The category accounted for 19.5% of television use, while cable captured 18.7%. Streaming led television use by far, at 49%.

Broadcast is still particularly good at delivering high viewership during live sports games, Nelson noted.

"If you think about an NFL audience, for example, you're still going to deliver big audiences amongst large segments of the population," he said. "So no matter how you dice that demographic, whether it's men, women, or old people, young people, or whatever the case might be, the NFL game is still going to deliver large segments of all of those audiences."

Brad Seitter, CEO of TVB, a trade organization representing the local broadcast industry, boiled down broadcast's strength during election cycles to "trust, reach and because it works."

Seitter told CNBC in a statement that television's perceived reliability is of utmost importance for political campaigns.

"Gaining the trust of a voter equals a vote for your candidate or issue," Seitter said.

He also said that he believes broadcast does a better job of promoting political candidates and issues than some digital channels.

"You may see a political ad on social media, but you don't trust the content of the ad because users are conditioned to not trust what they hear or see on social media," Seitter said. "Conversely, viewers trust their local broadcast TV news, so when they view a political ad, they are more likely to believe the content of the ad on a platform they know has long-standing rules, regulations and trust."

Seitter said that political campaigns continue to place advertisements on traditional TV because there is clear evidence that they are influential on voting behavior.

"Nothing moves the needle in polling like running an ad on broadcast TV," Seitter said.

According to a study conducted by TVB, 42% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans said broadcast or cable television was the most important form of advertising media in influencing how they cast their vote.

Erik Brydges, head of performance and political demand at sell-side ad company Magnite, told CNBC that broadcast's perceived influence is tied to the long history of the platform.

"There are multiple studies out there that show a correlation between the number of points you buy on TV in relation to moving poll numbers, because the medium's been around for like 70 years," he said.

And yet Brydges said he believes that broadcasting's strength is also due, in part, to muscle memory.

"A lot of campaigns and a lot of the consultants who work on the campaigns have just been really used to buying TV," Brydges said. "There's an old adage out there that no political consultant is ever going to get fired for suggesting buying more TV."

Broadcast companies are already feeling the windfall from elevated advertising spending.

Publicly traded broadcasters, including Nexstar Media Group, Gray Media, Sinclair and E.W. Scripps, each reported high political advertising revenue in their most recent fiscal quarters and forecast continued growth through the fall as the midterms inch closer.

StoneX's Kurnos told CNBC that broadcasting companies rely on the low-lift revenue from political advertising to help manage their debt.

"They have all the infrastructure in place for [standard advertising] already," Kurnos said. "And you don't need to work on the creative. You don't need to work on the selling. … Political is just, therefore, pure margin dollars."

Nexstar, which owns or operates at least 265 stations and a slew of websites and mobile apps, reported its highest quarterly revenue in the company's history. Net revenue hit $1.99 billion, and advertising revenue was $862 million, according to the August earnings report.

Overall revenue in the second fiscal quarter was largely driven by the incorporation of broadcast rival Tegna, which Nexstar officially acquired in March.

However, even discounting additional revenue from the merger, the company still reported fiscal second-quarter growth at legacy Nexstar that was primarily driven by $75 million of political advertising revenue, according to the company's most recent earnings call.

Gray Media, though operationally smaller than Nexstar, could also be a company to watch, according to Kurnos.

The company's stations operate in several markets with the most competitive races and thus the greatest ad spend: Gray has exposure in 12 competitive Senate races and all 11 competitive gubernatorial races, according to Kurnos.

"Gray has always been the most efficient political generator of the broadcast group," he said.

Sinclair and Scripps also reported political ad revenue as a bright spot in their earnings reports for the most recent fiscal quarter.

E.W. Scripps said that political ad revenue hit the highest second-quarter level ever, while Sinclair said that political ad revenue had grown 9% from the second quarter of 2022 during the last midterms season.

"No other medium delivers a political message as powerfully and reliably as broadcast television," E.W. Scripps CEO Adam Symson said on the company's second-quarter earnings call.

On the other end of the media spectrum, connected TV represents the fastest-growing category of political advertising spend, according to AdImpact. The category encompasses internet-connected devices like Apple TV or Roku.

It's predicted to capture 23%, or $2.7 billion, of this cycle's ad spending, AdImpact found, and is likely to continue to gain share.

Magnite's Brydges said the complicated and rapidly changing nature of connected TV, or CTV, and free, ad-supported streaming channels — also called FAST — has prevented some advertisers thus far from taking advantage of high viewership numbers.

"If you look at some of the FAST streaming services — some of your Plutos, your Tubis — a campaign or a consultant might not understand what those are," Brydges said. "Therefore, they might just be like, 'Well, if I don't understand what it is, then it's probably not worth investment.'"

However, he said he believes political consultants are becoming more attuned to the benefits that these platforms provide.

SKDK's Pia Carusone, who manages the firm's political advertising department, told CNBC in an interview that she sees value in streaming's specific audience targeting features.

"If you're buying NBC in New York City, for example, you're buying the whole market," she said of traditional advertising strategy. "Increasingly, now with the streaming and CTV platforms, they're able to really offer a lot more nuance in their targeting. So we're able to sort of deliver against those audiences more directly."

But ultimately, Carusone said, political advertising strategy relies on maintaining a diverse portfolio.

"You can't just do digital. You can't just do linear," she said. "Good buyers today are buying across the spectrum."