The 2024 cycle wasn't just bigger than 2020. The mix changed underneath it. Some channels swallowed share, others gave it up, and the campaigns that planned for the right mix outperformed the ones that defaulted to last cycle's playbook.
The Headline Number
US political ad spending hit roughly $12.32 billion in 2024, up about 29% from 2020 (per eMarketer). What's more interesting is how that pie was sliced.
Where Share Moved
Connected TV, Up
CTV was the big winner. Streaming services finally have enough scale and enough political-friendly inventory that campaigns can buy district-level reach without paying broadcast prices. Voter-file targeting, 90%+ completion rates, and unskippable mid-roll spots make CTV the closest digital equivalent to broadcast TV, with better targeting and better measurement.
Digital Display & Video, Up Significantly
Digital cleared $3.46 billion in 2024, up about 156% from 2020. Digital share went from roughly 14% of political spend to over 28%. That's a doubling in one cycle.
Search (Google). Up Sharply
Google's political ad revenue more than tripled from 2020 to 2024, from about $175M to $553M, per Brennan Center tracking. Campaigns figured out that brand searches on a candidate's name are some of the cheapest, highest-intent moments in the cycle.
Meta, Up, But Slower
Meta hit $568.7M in 2024, up about 86% from 2020. Still the largest single digital channel for political, but its share growth lagged Google and CTV.
Broadcast TV, Down (in Share)
Broadcast TV is still the biggest single bucket in absolute dollars, but its share of total political spend keeps shrinking. The audience is older, more expensive per impression, and increasingly hard to reach for under-40 voters.
Direct Mail, Mostly Flat
Mail still works for some persuasion universes (older voters, rural districts) but it's not where the new money went.
Why the Mix Changed
- Cord-cutting hit critical mass. A campaign that only buys broadcast misses a huge slice of voters under 50.
- Voter file integration with digital matured. You can now match a voter file to CTV, programmatic, and Meta with reasonable accuracy. That wasn't true in 2020.
- Search caught up. Campaigns that ignored Google in 2020 left a lot of cheap intent traffic on the table. Most of them fixed that in 2024.
- Meta's targeting got more restricted. The persuasion math on Meta shifted, and some spend that would have gone there migrated to programmatic CTV.
What This Means for 2026
- CTV is no longer optional on any race over about $20K total digital. The completion rates and the targeting precision are too good to skip.
- Search needs to be in every plan, even on small budgets. A few hundred dollars on brand-name defense (your candidate's name, your opponent's name) is some of the most cost-effective spend in a campaign.
- Don't default to a 70/30 Meta/Google split just because that's what last cycle looked like. The mix should reflect the audience, not habit.
- Programmatic is the persuasion workhorse for mid-budget races. Through a DSP, you can hit display, video, audio, and CTV with one voter-file audience and consistent measurement.
How We Plan a Mix
For races under about $11K total digital, a two-platform plan (Meta + Google) usually makes sense, too little budget to spread across three platforms without losing learning velocity. Above $11K, a three-platform plan (Meta, Google, programmatic) is the default, with CTV included in the programmatic bucket.
Phasing matters as much as the channel mix. We typically reserve 18% for foundation, 37% for persuasion, and 45% for GOTV, calculated backward from Election Day, not forward from the launch date. Frontloading kills GOTV. Backloading kills persuasion. The split has to be deliberate.
Bottom Line
Political media is still moving, not in one direction, but toward whatever combination of channels actually reaches the persuasion universe a given race needs. The campaigns that win in 2026 will be the ones that build a mix from the audience backward, not from last cycle's plan forward.