Balgarianovinite.com
Political ad buying in the 2024 election cycle remained concentrated among a small group of private media vendors, with the top firm pulling far ahead of its competitors — a dynamic that could influence how campaigns and super PACs deploy millions of dollars to the 2026 midterms.
Collectively, the five highest-paid political vendors received about $2.1 billion from super PACs, candidate campaigns, party committees and other political groups during the 2024 cycle, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis of federal campaign filings. Each of those firms specialized in media buying, underscoring the central role advertising placement plays in modern campaigns.
Spending on media buying was not evenly distributed across the two major political parties. Republican ad spending was spread across a relatively small group of firms, with 10 vendors each receiving more than $100 million during the cycle, and one clearing the $300 million bar. Democratic spending, by contrast, was far more centralized, with Waterfront Strategies taking in more than double the second-highest-paid vendor.
Waterfront Strategies, the advertising purchasing firm affiliated with the Democratic consulting powerhouse GMMB, received approximately $858 million in payments to place ads for Democratic-aligned super PACs and other outside groups. Media Buying & Analytics was the second-highest-paid vendor, with roughly $339 million, the vast majority of which came directly from Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Del Ray Media, a subsidiary of GOP-aligned Smart Media Group, followed closely behind at about $336 million, making it the top Republican-aligned vendor in the cycle. Strategic Media Services came next with nearly $289 million, including about $270 million paid directly by the Trump campaign, while the Republican firm Main Street Media Group rounded out the top five with about $280 million in reported payments.
Even though these media buying firms do not primarily produce campaign advertisements or control messaging, some political scientists say they exert significant power by acting as intermediaries between the campaigns and independent expenditure groups that fund political advertisements and the media outlets that air them, buying ad time and determining when and where ads run and how often voters see them.
“When you have control over sequencing and timing, you have a lot of power,” said Ray La Raja, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Campaigns may prefer large, established firms because they can handle enormous volumes of ad placements across fragmented media markets. However, La Raja warned that heavy reliance on a small number of media vendors can discourage experimentation and contribute to increasingly uniform campaign strategies across states and districts.
Waterfront Strategies’ rise in Democratic ad buying
Waterfront Strategies first reported receiving payments from political committees during the 2012 cycle and has expanded steadily since. The firm grew from roughly $92 million in reported payments in 2012 to nearly $858 million in 2024 – a nearly tenfold increase over 12 years.
Even before its record haul in 2024, Waterfront had consistently ranked as the top or second-highest-paid vendor in every cycle since 2014, establishing itself as one of the most dominant firms in the market. While many political vendors see declines in midterm years, Waterfront continued to grow during both the 2014 and 2018 cycles, underscoring its entrenched role within the Democratic-aligned super PAC ecosystem and its ability to retain major clients across election cycles.
Paul Herrnson, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, said Waterfront’s growth likely reflects broader increases in political advertising.
Waterfront depended heavily on a small number of Democratic-aligned super PACs. In 2024, nearly 90 percent of Waterfront’s reported receipts came from just three clients: Future Forward USA, WinSenate PAC and House Majority PAC.
The Harris-supporting Future Forward, which The New York Times called “an ad-making laboratory masquerading as a super PAC,” alone paid the firm about $383 million during the 2024 cycle, accounting for roughly half of Waterfront’s reported payments that year, according to OpenSecrets data. More than 94 percent of the super PAC’s total expenditures were directed toward media, with nearly identical amounts reported as payments to Waterfront ($382.9 million) and as “unspecified media buyouts” ($382.1 million).
Some campaign finance experts say understanding Waterfront’s role in Democratic ad buying requires looking at the principals who run the firm and their ties to candidate campaigns.
Waterfront’s parent firm, GMMB, is a major Democratic creative consulting firm founded in 1983 by Frank Greer, Jim Margolis, David Mitchell, and Annie Burns that works directly with candidate campaigns. Some of the firm’s partners have played prominent roles in presidential and party efforts for decades. Greer served as lead media consultant for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, while Margolis worked on Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid.
During the 2020 cycle, GMMB’s largest client was Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which accounted for nearly $204 million in reported payments. Margolis also served as a media adviser to Harris during her 2020 campaign, before Waterfront later received hundreds of millions of dollars from Future Forward USA, the single-candidate super PAC supporting Harris in 2024. Although the Harris campaign did not pay Waterfront or GMMB in 2024, some campaign finance experts say connections like this raise questions about whether super PACs – like Future Forward USA – operate independently from the campaigns they support.
In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court ruled that outside groups may spend unlimited sums on political advocacy so long as that spending is independent of candidates in regard to strategy, messaging, targeting or timing. In Citizens United v. FEC, the court extended that rule to corporations and unions.
“A lot of this is kind of incestuous – they work for the party and then they go to the consulting firm, or they work for the firm and then they go to the super PAC,” said Mike Franz, a professor of government and legal studies at Bowdoin College and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. “These are people who have had certain power – at least on the Margolis side – for a while and been involved in lots of things. And so then they kind of leverage that to their benefit in this space.”
Del Ray Media’s Trump-centered growth
Del Ray Media followed a markedly different growth trajectory from its Democratic counterparts, with its rise closely tied to Donald Trump’s presence on the ballot.
The Republican-aligned media buying firm reported nearly $10 million in payments during the 2016 cycle, before growing to $56 million in 2018 and over $99 million in 2020. But unlike most major vendors, Del Ray reported no political payments at all during the 2022 midterms, before surging to roughly $336 million in 2024 – a more than 35-fold increase over eight years.
That growth, however, was driven almost entirely by a single client. In 2024, Del Ray received about $329.9 million from Make America Great Again Inc., accounting for roughly 98 percent of the firm’s election-related revenue. Its only other client that cycle, SAG PAC, paid the firm about $5.6 million.
The firm’s client base has shifted markedly over time. During the 2016 and 2018 cycles, Del Ray’s largest clients were institutional Republican committees, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. By 2020, however, its sole reported client was America First Action, a single-candidate PAC in support of Trump.
Del Ray’s extreme client concentration stands in contrast to most other top vendors, which relied on multiple major super PACs for the bulk of its reported payments. Del Ray’s absence from the 2022 midterms suggests its business has become closely tied to Trump’s electoral activity, rather than to the broader Republican campaign infrastructure.
“It’s very rare to have a big firm like that heavily invested in just essentially one candidate,” Franz said. “A lot of Republican interests have essentially sort of hung their hat on the Trump movement. When Trump is not as involved or not on the ballot, there’s less of a client base for this firm, and it may have to then adjust moving into 2026 and 2028 if it wants to stay in business.”
Super PAC spending and transparency gaps
Since the Citizens United decision, outside groups – including super PACs – have taken on a larger role in financing political advertising. In the 2024 cycle, outside groups excluding party committees spent roughly $2 billion on independent expenditures tied to the presidential election.
Because super PACs are legally barred from coordinating with candidates, campaigns have no authority over the content or timing of the advertising those groups air.
“It is maddening to sit in the campaign and watch a super PAC that’s raising millions and millions of dollars to support your candidate do stuff that you think is a disaster, and you can’t talk to them,” said Stuart Stevens, a veteran Republican media consultant.
The rise of super PAC spending helps explain why media-buying firms like Waterfront Strategies and Del Ray Media have become such influential players in modern elections.
Media consulting can be highly lucrative in federal elections. Historically, political media consultants earned commissions of roughly 15 percent on advertising purchases. While compensation structures have evolved, commission-based pay remains the basis of many relationships between campaigns, super PACs and media vendors, according to Stevens. With billions of dollars moving through a small number of firms each cycle, even modest percentages can translate into substantial sums.
Those dynamics take on greater significance as political advertising spending continues to grow. Spending on political advertising is expected to reach $10.8 billion during the 2026 cycle, more than 20 percent higher than in 2022.
As political advertising continues to expand, the 2024 cycle offers a window into how that money is likely to move in future elections: through a relatively small set of private media-buying firms that now play a central role in translating campaign and super PAC dollars into voter-facing messages.
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