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Paying The Cost: Is Election Year Advertising Affecting The Touring Industry?
Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images – Election
Voters passed a gauntlet of candidate advertising on their way to a polling place on election day in Manchester, NH on Feb. 11, 2020. The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary is today.
In case you haven’t heard, there will be a U.S. presidential election in 2020, and the ramifications are expected to be far-reaching. Aside from the surfeit of political, economic and social questions coming to a head in November, an area the election may be having the most effect on now is the cost of advertising.
Live industry veteran Joe Killian, who founded and for eight years was executive producer of Central Park Summerstage and former VP of Talent at Radio City Music Hall, said there’s always a spike in TV ad pricing after Labor Day in an election year. Now, with overall spending in 2020 projected to hit $10 billion in more than 2,000 elections and 8 million ad airings, according to a study by Cross Screen Media, the spike may happen sooner than ever before.
The 2016 election was estimated to have cost a cool $6.5 billion, up from $6.3 billion in 2012 according campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org and one of the biggest areas in spending was television (although Donald Trump received an estimated $5.9 billion in “free” media coverage because of his attention-grabbing nature). Bloomberg reported in 2016 that candidates’ TV spending incrementally rose week by week to total $211.4 million from Hillary Clinton and $74 million from Donald Trump at two weeks before the election.
Concerts and tours advertising on TV is often localized, Killian told Pollstar. “You will see 30-second spots around local news and late-night shows.”
Prices on local television can vary widely according to SkyWorksMarketing, with a good rule of thumb in most small to medium markets being $5 per 1,000 viewers for a 30-second timeslot. National advertising is a whole other ball game and, in general, Killian said most tours wouldn’t be buying television ads at that level.
“It looks like we are in one of those years that we are going to have more money spent than ever, but from what I can see it looks like a significant amount of that is going to digital,” Killian said. “Television reaches mass eyeballs but digital media allows you to buy very targeted, whether geographically, demographically, or psychographically.”
Scott Goodstein, whose career has repeatedly switched lanes between artist advocacy (Punkvoter.com, CreativeMajority, DailyAction) and hardcore electoral campaign monitoring (Catalyst Campaigns, Revolution Messaging, Rock Against Bush, Artists For Obama, Artists For Bernie 2016) says 2020 will see advertising become more competitive not only on television, but also in the digital space. Platforms like Facebook are looking to avoid labels of being politically biased, he said, and thus will be offering much advertising space in an equal-opportunity “bidding” system that will likely be won by high-bidding political campaigns.
“If you are a band trying to show your quick video before a tour date, it’s almost impossible to happen and get enough saturation for people to see it,” Goodstein said. “To get your pre-roll to be seen by young eyeballs when you have a presidential race, a U.S. Senate race, a primary, the competition is so grave, you are competing literally for the same eyeballs. A young person that has voted two to three times in the last three elections is going to be highly saturated and prioritized and their Facebook feed is only going to allow so many ads.”
Goodstein suggested rather than getting caught in bidding systems or paying outrageous prices for local television ads, tour marketers should consider targeted premium advertising.
“Lifestyle marketing – buy premium at events, local community websites that politicians will overlook, things that are considered less targeted (political) buys. Maybe LAist.com is charging more than they should for premium placement … buy it anyway.
“I did lifestyle marketing for Obama in 2008,” Goodstein continues. “We targeted barber shops, local coffee shops, tattoo parlors, skate shops. [Campaigns] don’t have time to do that with scarce resources for a primary [right now].”
Killian, now CEO of brand and music consultancy Killian + Company, said building connections with fans is the name of the game in 2020.
“Artists are very sophisticated in using all of media and tools available to them to reach their fans,” Killian says. “I don’t think tours are going to suffer during that Labor Day to Nov. 2 timeframe. I think most tours will anticipate and work around the election.”