Managing Makegoods and Broadcast Buys This Political Season

What’s worse than seeing political ads nonstop? If your answer is something other than, “having your ads pre-empted due to political ads nonstop” then it’s almost guaranteed that you don’t work in the media industry.

Borrell Associates Inc. has estimated that during the 2016 election season 5.8 billion dollars will be spent on broadcast television. And yes, you did read that right, that’s billion with a “b”. To top that, broadcast television advertising makes up roughly half of the total advertising spend for political this year.

So how do we prevent these pre-empt spots? Evan Brown points out some strategies in his article, “Working Around the 2016 Political Advertising Season”. Here are a few:

1.      Buy early! Typically stations use a “last-in-first-out” method, so the sooner, the better on those broadcast buys.

2.      Avoid buying five spots per week for a standard program like morning or late news. This gives the station absolutely no flexibility in your placements.

3.      See if 15 or 10 second spots are less likely to get bumped. Political ads are commonly 30 seconds in length.

4.      Accept the fact that the spot you paid $100 for last buy will now be double and adjust accordingly.

5.      Keep on top of your makegoods. Despite receiving them all day, every day, it’s important to respond rapidly to have the best chance to re-placed spots.

Hopefully these tactics can be of assistance in reducing the amount of makegoods into a more manageable task. As The Little Engine that Could would say, “I think I can, I think I can”, so stand strong broadcast television media buyers, there is light at the end of the tunnel!