January 11, 2024

We are days away from the Iowa caucuses. What does TV spending look like for each candidate making their final push? Check it out below!

How were these results compiled?
The data below reflects combined candidate & PAC spend on local broadcast and national cable between 12/1 – 12/31 and is specifically measured against GOP Primary Voters. For simplicity, we use “campaign” to refer to ads run by the combination of each candidate and their supporting PAC. Here are the specific Iowa markets where we measured broadcast spots. 

How are the campaigns performing in Iowa?

Impressions: December was, not surprisingly, a massive month for TV spend in Iowa. The top 4 candidates delivered 87% more impressions to GOP Primary voters in December than they had in November.

That increase came, in large part, from Haley:

• Haley delivered 240% more impressions in December than in November.
• Haley also delivered 57% more impressions than DeSantis in December (8.5M to 5.4M)

Cumulative Reach: Despite the significant increase in impressions, no candidate reached more than 42% of IA GOP Primary voters in December.

Incremental Reach: As we have seen in previous months, the vast majority of reach was achieved in just the first few days of December for each campaign, with very little incremental reach after the first week. 

Why does that matter?

In the chart above, we see the early plateau in reach, which led to reached Iowa GOP primary voters viewing TV ads at an incredibly high frequency. Voters reached by Haley saw ads 111 times on average and those reached by DeSantis had an average frequency of 73!

All eyes will be on Iowa through the caucuses, and then it’s onto New Hampshire. Stay tuned!

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