We’re in the middle of what experts project will be the most expensive election campaign in American history. Together, the two political parties spent over $5 billion thru Labor Day 2024 on broadcast advertising as part of this hotly contested election. As a result, nonprofits with active public service announcement campaigns have asked about the possible impact this could have on the availability of donated TV and radio station ad time for their campaigns. 

To answer that question, Connect360 reached out to more than 4,000 Community Affairs and Public Service Directors across the country. These are the professionals responsible for selecting the PSAs that air on American broadcast television and radio stations. Most of the stations that provided feedback told us that the election would not have a major impact on their airing of PSAs between Labor Day and Election Day. Here is a look at what they had to say and what it means for organizations with an active PSA campaign and those that are ready to launch one.

PSA Airings During the 2020 Presidential Campaign

In 2020, during the last presidential election, Nielsen found that in the Labor Day thru Election Day period TV PSA airings decreased by about 5% compared to the same months in the year before the election. 

According to AdImpact, the leading tracker of ad spending, political ad spending for the 2024 election cycle will probably be 13% higher than in 2020. So far, in the lead up to Labor Day, AdImpact has reported spending was up by 31% compared to 2020. At the same time, Emarketer cautioned advertisers to be aware that political ad spending would likely have some affect on the availability of paid ad inventory to other advertisers, with a reported 56% of total political ad spending going to linear TV.

The question, then, is what impact will this year’s higher paid election spending have on donated ad time this year for the airing of PSAs?

 What Stations Say About How They Will Actually Be Using PSAs

To get beyond just what happened in previous election cycles and really understand how stations plan to use PSAs, we went straight to the people who are making the decisions: Community Affairs and Public Service Directors at stations and networks across the country. 

The majority of the TV and radio Community Affairs Directors we heard from in our survey said they personally decide which PSAs their station air. Nearly half also said are responsible for choosing PSAs for three or more stations. Therefore, their plans for this election season is important. 

According to these influential decision makers, 57% of stations plan to air the same number of PSAs during the campaign as they would air during a typical non-election period. Nine percent even said they would air slightly more. Therefore, despite advertising dollars pouring into stations from political campaigns, PSAs will continue to be aired by most of the TV and radio stations that participated in our survey.

That’s good news for the PSAs that have already been selected and are currently being run by stations, but what about new announcements? The news is positive for them as well. The vast majority (87%) of the Community Affairs Directors that shared their plans with us said they would continue selecting and airing new PSAs throughout the campaign period. Only 8% said they would not select new PSAs until after the election. 

Other Factors That Could Affect PSA Results

With virtually all TV respondents to this survey working at local stations, a group that typically makes up about 1/3 of total PSA airings it is important to understand where the remaining TV airings on average come from. The remainder comes from cable networks, regional sports networks and digital substations. Based on past experience, regional sports networks and digital substations tend to be used less frequently for political advertising and are likely to maintain their PSA volume as well. This will serve to offset any decrease in local TV and cable airings. Cable, especially cable news stations like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are likely to see some decreases in usage during the run up to Election Day.

Also, if there is going to be a decrease anywhere, it is likely to happen in radio. Radio tends to be more targetable for political advertising and does not have the same kind of sports and substation structure to limit declines as TV does. 

The exception may be in the “battleground” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. Here, the presidential campaigns are already pouring big money into advertising and we could see a larger than average impact on PSA airings. 

The key takeaway then is, based on our survey results, is we do not expect to see huge changes in PSA airings during this political season.

What to Do if Your PSA Airings Are Affected

The good news is that if stations follow the trends we saw in our survey, most campaigns will not see anything more than a limited decreases in PSA airings. It will probably be in line with the 5% decrease Nielsen saw in 2020. Our best advice at this point is to continue running PSA campaign the way you normally would.

We will be carefully monitoring all the campaigns we manage throughout the election. However, not all PSA campaigns behave the same. If we see any adverse impacts, we have the ability to implement remedial efforts after the election that can help get a PSA campaign back on track. 

If you need help with your PSA campaign, you can always turn to the experts at Connect360 to get your campaign the attention it deserves.

To learn more, or to launch your next PSA campaign, contact Connect360.