We’re preparing to enter another major election cycle, and by this point it probably goes without saying that things are going to be tense. Contentious political issues will dominate the conversation throughout 2024, and that includes the conversation surrounding digital marketing.

In fact, the election cycle is poised to have a significant impact on the marketing landscape as a whole. It’s the elephant in the room that marketers can’t afford to overlook, so in this post, we’re going to share a few of the major trends we foresee in the months to come.

How the Election Cycle Will Impact Digital Marketing

1) Political ad spending will skyrocket.

We’ll start with an obvious one: There’s going to be a lot of money spent on election-year advertising. Early forecasts suggest that total political ad expenditures will top $11 billion by the end of 2024, making it one of the most expensive political cycles in American history. Much of this ad spending will be devoted to linear TV and connected TV (CTV); for the rest of us, we should expect ad inventories to be more competitive than ever.

2) Campaigns will invest heavily in personalization.

We also expect to see political campaigns devoting a lot of their resources to data analytics, allowing them to deliver highly personalized messaging to targeted voters. Machine learning and microtargeting are sure to be two of the year’s most buzzed-about marketing topics.

3) It’s going to be another banner year for short-form video content.

Over the past several years, the marketing landscape has been dominated by content such as TikTok and Instagram Reels. We expect to see that trend heightened further in 2024, as political campaigns leverage short-form video to get their message across in an easily digestible way. Notably, short-form videos will prove especially useful for reaching younger voters.

4) Political ads will be increasingly regulated.

There are real concerns within the tech industry, and in the culture overall, about the role of social media in spreading misinformation. Tech companies naturally want to prove their ability to self-regulate, rather than risking more onerous regulation from the government, so one thing we’ll see in 2024 is an increased effort to control misinformation. At the very least, tech companies will crack down on their disclosure policies, something Meta has already done.

5) AI will be a major topic.

Along the same lines, one of the major worries surrounding digital marketing in 2024 is the use of AI to create “deep fakes” of political candidates or world events, creating credible impressions that a particular candidate said or did something they never actually said or did. Again, we expect to see tech companies stepping up their efforts to regulate AI use. Meta’s AI disclosure policies are a good starting point and come with some potentially major penalties for campaigns that violate them.

6) Digital platforms will struggle to be impartial.

It’s increasingly difficult for tech companies to take a stance on political issues without coming across as partisan or partial. This conundrum will become all the more pronounced in 2024. Here’s one major example: YouTube previously implemented a policy to ban users alleging fraudulent activity in past elections, a move designed to rid election deniers from their platform. The company has since reversed this stance. We expect to see plenty of other tech companies walking a similarly fine line over the months to come.

7) Elon Musk’s X will be a wild card.

It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on with X (formerly known as Twitter), or to predict where the platform will head in 2024. For now, we’ll simply note that the platform will be allowing political ads to run for the first time since 2019, which is potentially a big deal as we head toward the elections.

8) Journalistic institutions will lose traction.

Survey after survey shows that consumers trust individual writers, reporters, and journalists far more than they trust big journalistic institutions. From a marketing perspective, the upshot of this is that more personalized channels, including Substack newsletters, will become more and more dominant.

9) Political ads will grow increasingly tiresome.

Finally, it’s worth acknowledging the extent to which voters have already grown tired of seeing political ads, particularly on social media sites. Surveys show that this is one area where Americans tend to agree: A solid majority thinks that political ads should be banned from social media altogether. That may point to a long-tail trend where, a few elections down the road, we start to see political campaigns rethink their digital strategies completely.

Prepare for the Political Season

The upcoming year is sure to be eventful, not only in the realm of politics but in the realm of digital marketing, too. We’ll keep you posted on any major developments. Keep tabs on the enCOMPASS blog for further updates.