Entering the home stretch of the campaign, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have very different media buying strategies for energizing their bases and convincing any undecided voters. The same is true for the race for United States senator from Arizona. Cox Media has been working with the national, state and local candidates to execute their broadcast media plans and is sharing some publicly available, market-specific spends, and interesting trends.
“In the past, we saw candidates gravitate to more traditional TV advertising such as news cable channels and local news,” says Rich Barone, vice president of Cox Media. “Today to break through the clutter and to be more voter targeted with messages, we see them reaching out to specific audiences using a variety of more than 50 cable channels like ESPN, Animal Planet, Travel, DIY, Game Show Network, Bravo, Lifetime and Sci-Fi channels, just to name some.”
The most starting trend that Barone shared is total spending. Cox Media is estimating that the candidates for president and Arizona senator and other advertisers supporting those races will collectively spend $280 million across various media through the 2020 election cycle. The Senate race in Arizona alone is expected to see broadcast spending upwards of $100 million.
“Now more than past cycles, we are seeing campaigns utilizing data to target voters with customizing spots, to drive effectiveness,” Barone says. “Media strategies have changed in the last 30 days. For example, the Trump team has become more geographically targeted as opposed to running national ads like they were doing over the summer.”
