Political advertising is propping up a slow ad market

"In the first half of 2022, Basis Technologies, which handles programmatic ads for political campaigns, saw a more than four-fold rise in political ad spending compared with 1H 2020, with all clients' average spending going up.

The second half of election years always sees a significant bump in political spending (Basis saw 84% of 2020’s political ad spend in the latter half). With more primary elections taking place later than usual this year, that could skew expenditures even further in the second half."

Read more in Insider Intelligence.