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Key Takeaways
Election years compress the marketing calendar into a narrow, high-stakes window. Between Labor Day and Election Day, political coverage will inevitably dominate the news cycle, and every media plan running through that stretch will face closer scrutiny over where ads land and why. For many teams, that means treating news content as risky across the board and retreating from the category until the cycle cools.
But while this reaction is understandable, it’s a reflex that ultimately protects less than it costs. Leading advertisers are moving past the old binary of “brand safe versus unsafe” and toward a more nuanced evaluation of brand suitability—a more granular standard that assesses whether a specific environment aligns with where a brand actually wants to appear, rather than screening out entire categories at once. Advertisers that view news content as unsafe by default and avoid it altogether miss out on some of the most engaged, high-value audiences consuming digital media. Rather than avoiding such content entirely, taking a brand suitability approach lets advertisers manage election season risk without giving up the reach that news content offers.
The election season this fall carries risk and opportunity, often in the same placement. The advertisers who meet that moment with a granular, suitability-first approach, rather than a blanket retreat from news, will protect their brands while keeping the audiences that make protecting them worth the effort.
Advertisers’ concerns around news and brand safety aren’t unfounded, as serving ads near polarizing or offensive content can erode brand trust at best and incite consumer backlash at worst. However, those concerns can be misdirected. In fact, studies comparing brand engagement across hard news like crime and lighter categories like sports have found virtually no gap in brand purchase intent, indicating that blanket avoidance often screens out safe inventory along with the risky.
Treating all news as unsafe misreads the value of the category. It blocks brands off from engaged, high-value audiences while guarding against risks that don't apply to many kinds of news content and can be managed with granular brand suitability controls.
For example, avid news consumers tend to skew towards higher income, with nine in 10 CEOs and board directors calling themselves news junkies. News content also offers considerable reach: A quarter of Americans identify as news junkies, checking headlines around six times a day and reading about seven articles daily.
Considering all this, the advertisers best positioned to succeed are trading blanket avoidance for a more granular, strategic approach that acknowledges the opportunity presented by high-quality, balanced news content.
Rather than avoiding all news content, advertisers should aim for precision. To start, brands must assess how comfortable they are running ads around news during election season, as well as which types of news content they're willing to advertise around.
Jackie Huelbig McLaughlin, VP of Candidates and Causes at Basis, says some brands running always-on campaigns might dial their news exposure up or down as the cycle intensifies, tightening contextual targeting with stricter allow and block lists during the most charged stretches, or weighting spend toward environments like search or sports content on CTV.
Other brands will opt to lean further into news content, but with the same deliberate approach. "I think most advertisers' fear is around appearing near content that's too far on one side of the political spectrum or the other," says Huelbig McLaughlin. "Depending on your audience and your brand, a center-of-the-road publisher that you know will offer a fair perspective is often a safe way to reach those high-value audiences."
Advertisers should also consider how AI is both increasing brand risk in digital spaces and offering more evolved solutions for managing brand suitability. The spread of AI-generated content has fueled mis- and disinformation online, widening the brand safety risks advertisers must account for. A 2025 Basis survey found that 100% of marketers believe AI poses a brand safety and misinformation risk, with 88.6% calling that risk moderate to significant.
However, the same technology can also let advertisers capture more signals and make brand suitability calls more precisely. AI-led semantic approaches, for example, read each impression in context rather than screening on keywords alone, weighing real-time signals to cut waste more efficiently.
AI and machine learning can sharpen optimizations too, though Huelbig McLaughlin stresses that human oversight still matters. "In the sensitive stretch leading up to the midterms, it helps to maintain a human touch in optimizations, so the team can catch sensitive placements and adjust quickly as coverage shifts.”
The midterms will test how thoughtfully brands handle both brand suitability and news content exposure. The teams who strategize around balancing opportunity with risk, set guardrails that are granular rather than blunt, and maintain human oversight will protect their brands without surrendering the reach that makes news audiences worth pursuing.
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Looking for more insights around how political advertising will impact nonpolitical advertisers in the lead up to the midterms? How Political Advertising Will Impact the Media Landscape in 2026 provides a deep dive, plus expert recommendations for how nonpolitical advertisers may want to adjust their strategies.
What is the difference between brand safety and brand suitability?
Brand safety is a binary assessment of whether a certain advertising environment is safe or unsafe. Brand suitability is a more granular read of whether a specific environment fits where a brand wants to appear. Suitability moves past blanket category-level blocking and evaluates individual placements against a brand's audience, values, and risk tolerance. That precision is what lets advertisers stay present in valuable news environments during an election cycle instead of screening out an entire category at once.
Should advertisers avoid news content during an election year?
When advertisers avoid news content during an election year altogether, they risk missing out on engaged, high-value audiences. Studies comparing brand engagement across hard news and lighter categories have found virtually no gap in purchase intent, which means category-wide blocking screens out safe inventory along with the risky. News content also delivers engaged, high-value audiences that are difficult to reach elsewhere. A suitability-first approach allows advertisers to manage risk while maintaining reach.
Why are news audiences valuable to advertisers?
News audiences tend to be highly engaged and higher-income than the general population. Avid news consumers check headlines multiple times a day and read several articles daily, and a meaningful share of senior business decision-makers identify as heavy news readers. Cutting news entirely out of a media plan forfeits access to those audiences in exchange for guarding against risks that granular controls can manage.
How is AI affecting brand safety and suitability?
The spread of AI-generated content has fueled mis- and disinformation, exacerbating brand safety risks for advertisers. At the same time, AI is giving advertisers more granular brand suitability controls that they can use to address these and other risks.
How can advertisers prepare their media plans for the 2026 midterms?
Preparation starts with deciding how much news exposure a brand is comfortable with and which types of news content align with it. From there, teams can calibrate through granular allow and block lists, weight spend toward environments like search or sports content on CTV during the most charged stretches, and lean on center-of-the-road news publishers to reach high-value audiences with less risk. Human oversight remains essential across the pre-election window, so teams can catch sensitive placements and adjust as coverage shifts.