5 Takeaways for the Last Weekend of Political Ads

We’re entering the final weekend of the 2024 election cycle, which also means that we’re entering the final weekend of election-related advertising… at least until the 2026 midterms.

Due to the close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, it’s been a particularly intense cycle for political ads, to the point where a majority of Americans feel overwhelmed, especially those living in key swing states.

The good news for those exhausted voters is that election ads will vanish from the airwaves after Nov. 5. But until then, both campaigns are flooding the linear, streaming, and digital space with last-minute pleas for votes.

“A quarter of a billion dollars went to [campaign] PACs between Oct. 1 and 16th,” notes Keith Norman, vp of political practice at LG Ad Solutions, who monitors political advertising in the CTV space. “Typically, 50-60% of that will go to media, so there are still new ad dollars coming in.”

We asked Norman—a former news producer who started his career at NBC News—for the five things voters and viewers should know about the last wave of 2024 political ads they’ll see this weekend.

1. The big donors came in late

According to Norman, the sudden flurry of new ad dollars is largely courtesy of big-ticket donors who had previously held off on throwing their cash into the ring. Chalk that hesitancy up to the summer-into-fall roller coaster that saw Harris replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket and Trump surviving two assassination attempts.

“I believe those donors were just watching to see what would happen,” Norman says, pointing to how both Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates just gave $50 million to the Harris campaign in late October.

“Trump has been running for 100 weeks, and Harris has been running for 14,” he adds. “I think the Harris donors were waiting to see if she was going to keep this competitive and if there was a path for her to win.”

2. This may be linear’s last stand

While the Harris campaign is splitting its advertising equally between digital and linear platforms, the Trump team remains largely focused on the latter. Norman agrees that it’s safe to assume that has a lot to do with the GOP’s voter base, who are more likely to be older and still wedded to their linear viewing habits.