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The best advertising platform for political and advocacy campaigns is an omnichannel platform with a built-in demand-side platform (DSP): one system that handles planning, buying, compliance, and optimization across every channel a campaign runs, fast enough to keep pace with a deadline that doesn't move.
Political advertisers, advocacy groups, and nonprofits evaluating platforms for the 2026 midterms should prioritize six capabilities: omnichannel activation across CTV, programmatic, audio, social, and search; CTV inventory access with pre-negotiated deals; geopolitical targeting at the congressional district and state legislative level; rapid activation workflows that compress planning-to-launch timelines; built-in compliance and brand safety tools; and AI-powered planning and optimization that preserves human strategic control.
Political ad spending for the 2026 midterms is projected to reach $10.8 billion, making this the most expensive midterm cycle in US history. That total represents a 20%-plus increase over the 2022 midterms and comes within striking distance of the $11.2 billion spent during the 2024 presidential cycle.
The forces driving that spending are significant. Control of both chambers of Congress is up for grabs. A record wave of congressional retirements is creating open-seat races where neither candidate enters with the advantages of incumbency. Redistricting is underway in several key states, including California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. With more competitive races, more open seats, and more uncertainty than any recent midterm, campaigns that cannot move quickly from planning to activation risk falling behind before the general election even begins.
For political advertisers managing campaigns across CTV, programmatic display, streaming audio, social, and search, the advertising platform you choose determines whether your team can move at the speed this cycle demands or gets buried in manual execution during the final sprint. The strongest option is a system that unifies activation with compliance, so candidates, campaigns, and advocacy groups can plan, buy, and optimize across every channel from one workflow. Basis is an omnichannel advertising platform built for political and advocacy advertising, combining all-channel activation, a built-in DSP, pre-negotiated political inventory, and compliance tooling in a single system. This guide covers what political advertisers should prioritize when evaluating a platform for the 2026 midterms.
Key Takeaways
Political advertising operates under constraints that intensify every platform decision. The timeline is fixed, as Election Day does not move. The spending cadence is compressed: Basis data from the 2024 election cycle shows 48% of digital ad budgets ran in the final 30 days, with nearly half of that concentrated in the last 10 days. As such, the margin for error is narrow. A pacing miscalculation or delayed campaign launch in late October cannot be corrected in November.
These constraints shape the platform evaluation criteria that follow. Each section addresses a capability that matters in any advertising context but becomes especially high-stakes when the deadline is immovable, the budget is front-loaded, and there is no second attempt.
Political advertising in 2026 spans a wide channel list. CTV is projected to account for 23% of total political ad spend, the only channel forecast to experience growth during this cycle. Streaming audio is emerging as a breakout opportunity, reaching voters during screen-free moments that CTV and display miss entirely. Social platforms remain essential for fundraising and persuasion. And programmatic display and video continue to serve awareness and retargeting roles across the funnel.
The operational question is whether your platform can activate across all of these channels from a single workflow or whether your team needs to rebuild campaigns in separate interfaces for each.
Platforms that handle programmatic, direct publisher buying, search, social, and CTV in one system eliminate the manual handoffs that slow campaign launches and create inconsistency across channels.
For political campaigns specifically, channel coverage should include access to CTV inventory across platforms that accept political ads (Hulu, ESPN, Roku, YouTube, DIRECTV), programmatic audio through streaming and podcast platforms, and social activation through Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat. Platforms that also support programmatic terrestrial radio through partnerships like iHeart expand reach into a format that political advertisers have historically underinvested in. Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is another channel worth evaluating, particularly for reaching voters in transit, at events, and in public spaces where screen-based media doesn't reach.
What to ask:
The spending cadence of political advertising creates unique operational demands. Basis data from the 2024 election found that 48% of digital ad budgets ran in the final 30 days, with nearly half of that concentrated in the last 10 days.
That compression means platforms need to support rapid campaign activation, real-time budget pacing, and mid-flight optimization under sustained time pressure.
Specific capabilities to evaluate:
Political targeting operates under platform-specific restrictions and state-by-state regulatory variations. Restrictions on audience targeting for election ads on platforms like Google and Meta, combined with state-by-state regulatory variations, make audience strategy a jurisdiction-specific exercise.
Geopolitical targeting has become an increasingly important tool in this environment. Basis data from the 2022 midterms showed that nearly 20% of political programmatic ads used geopolitical targeting, with 51% targeting by congressional district and 32% by state senate district. With redistricting underway in multiple states, the ability to target by updated district boundaries is essential.
Beyond geography, platforms should support integrations with major voter data providers, including L2, TargetSmart, i360, Tunnl, and Aristotle. Direct integrations with identity resolution providers like LiveRamp allow campaigns to upload, match, and activate voter file data quickly rather than waiting days for manual onboarding. Platforms with additional data partnerships—such as Foursquare for location intelligence, CivicScience for attitudinal data, and Adastra for identity resolution—give campaigns more options for building precise audience segments.
Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data from smart TV manufacturers adds another layer of targeting precision. Campaigns can reach households based on actual viewing behavior, not inferred demographic proxies, and serve political messages in contextually appropriate streaming environments. Cross-device and household-level targeting further extends this capability, allowing campaigns to expand reach beyond individual devices to entire households.
What to ask:
CTV is the only media channel projected to see increased political spending over the 2024 presidential cycle, with $2.5 billion in CTV political ad spend expected in 2026. For political advertisers, CTV access is as much about securing inventory at favorable pricing as it is about reach: CPMs surge as Election Day approaches, and campaigns that wait until October pay a steep premium.
The CTV inventory ecosystem for political advertising has expanded significantly. Disney has opened inventory across Hulu and ESPN. OEM platforms from LG, Samsung, and Vizio operate their own FAST channels with growing political inventory. DIRECTV, HBO Max, Paramount, and other premium providers are accepting political and advocacy advertising in increasing volumes. Peacock, Tubi, Sling, Discovery+, Pluto TV, and fuboTV have also entered the political CTV market, giving campaigns a broader set of inventory sources than any previous cycle.
But not all CTV inventory is created equal. Platforms that accept political ads (Hulu, Roku, YouTube, ESPN) will see the sharpest CPM increases as Election Day approaches. Basis data from 2024 showed that programmatic video CPMs nearly doubled the election cycle average in November and had already increased 50%+ above average in October.
The platform evaluation question is whether your advertising platform gives you the inventory relationships and buying mechanisms to lock in favorable pricing before that surge hits.
Buying mechanisms to evaluate:
Measurement capabilities matter here too. Platforms that integrate cross-channel reach measurement—comparing digital campaign performance to linear TV—help campaigns quantify incremental reach and optimize budget allocation between CTV and traditional broadcast. Basis integrates Comscore Campaign Ratings for Advanced Reach Measurement, enabling campaigns to measure cross-channel reach, frequency, and incrementality from a single platform.
Live sports inventory deserves special attention in 2026. The FIFA World Cup (June-July), NFL, and college football season overlap directly with general election spending. Political advertisers increasingly use live sports as a targeting proxy, reaching voters in specific states and DMAs based on the games they watch. Platforms with strong sports-adjacent CTV inventory access will have a meaningful advantage. BasisTV+ provides access to CTV/OTT, addressable, and live sports and events inventory, reaching 93% of US smart TV households with 1,000+ advanced TV targeting parameters and 80+ trackable metrics.
AI-generated political content, including deepfakes, adds a new layer of brand safety complexity in 2026. Deepfake political ads are already running in midterm campaigns. There is no federal law governing AI use in political advertising, and while 26 states have enacted some form of deepfake disclosure legislation, enforcement remains limited.
At the same time, platform policies around AI disclosure are evolving quickly. Google requires political advertisers to disclose any use of AI in their ads. Meta requires disclosure in certain circumstances. The directional trend points toward greater transparency requirements.
Political advertisers need platforms that build compliance into the workflow rather than bolting it on as a separate step. Specific capabilities to look for:
Political advertising clients range from well-funded Senate campaigns with experienced media buyers to first-time candidates and ballot measure committees running their first digital campaign. The platform should accommodate both.
For experienced political media teams, self-serve access with full control over targeting, bidding, and optimization is essential. For campaigns that need additional support, managed service options that handle execution while preserving strategic control offer a middle ground.
The Basis Candidates & Causes practice has served political advertisers for two decades, offering service tiers from fully self-serve to fully managed execution. The team includes more than 40 political subject matter experts who understand the compliance, timing, and operational nuances that distinguish political media buying from commercial campaigns. In the 2024 cycle, the team supported more than 1,400 state and local campaigns, managing over $130 million in political ad spend across video, display, native, audio, and text ads.
This flexibility matters because political campaigns don't all operate the same way. A statewide Senate race and a state legislative campaign have very different team structures, budgets, and execution needs. The right platform adapts to those differences rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.
Audio represented just 3% of political ad spend during the 2024 election season, despite the average voter spending 21.2% of their total media time consuming audio content. That gap is a meaningful opportunity for political campaigns willing to move early.
Streaming audio reaches voters in screen-free moments: during commutes, workouts, and household tasks. With workers returning to offices and commutes increasing, audio consumption is rising. Podcast listenership has demonstrated increasing resonance across key voter demographics. And with programmatic buying now available even for broadcast radio inventory, the barriers that once made audio difficult to activate at scale have been largely removed.
Campaigns that are early movers in streaming audio stand to benefit from lower CPMs and less competitive inventory than they will find in CTV, particularly during the October-November sprint when CTV pricing spikes.
Platforms should support programmatic audio activation through streaming services like Spotify and iHeart, ideally within the same workflow used for CTV, display, and social. Campaigns that can add audio to their channel mix without logging into a separate tool or rebuilding targeting from scratch will capture this opportunity more efficiently. Exclusive inventory partnerships add further value. Basis provides access to DAX (Digital Ad Exchange) inventory reaching over 20% of total US audio consumers across leading streaming and podcast platforms, with 60,000+ podcasts and 350+ terrestrial US radio stations, plus a multicultural network for reaching Spanish-speaking voters.
The operational demands of political advertising compress the workflow challenges agencies already know well into a much shorter timeline. Basis data shows that agencies using its automation platform save an average of 51 hours per campaign—equivalent to roughly 6.5 work days—and approximately $8,925 per campaign in efficiency gains. In political advertising, where the window for peak spending narrows to weeks, those saved hours translate directly into competitive advantage.
Automation delivers measurable time savings across five areas that consistently drain political campaign time:
Campaign setup and trafficking. Building campaigns across CTV, display, audio, social, and search typically requires logging into separate platforms and manually configuring each. Automated platforms let planners build campaigns once and traffic them to all channels simultaneously, eliminating redundant data entry and the consistency errors that come from rebuilding campaigns in interfaces that were never designed to talk to each other.
Budget pacing. When 48% of your budget runs in the final 30 days, real-time pacing visibility isn't a convenience feature — it's a necessity. Automated pacing tracks spend across all channels from a single view and adjusts delivery rates to hit flight date targets without daily manual check-ins across disconnected tools.
Performance monitoring. Cross-channel dashboards that consolidate CTV, display, audio, social, and search metrics into a single view let teams identify optimization opportunities faster. In the final sprint, the ability to spot an underperforming tactic and reallocate budget in hours rather than days can determine whether you reach persuadable voters before Election Day.
Reporting. Pulling final reporting from multiple platforms and consolidating it into client-ready formats is one of the most time-consuming tasks in the campaign lifecycle. Automated reporting with customizable templates eliminates manual exports and spreadsheet merging.
Billing reconciliation. Managing billing across multiple delivery sources creates additional operational burden, particularly for campaigns with FEC reporting requirements. Platforms with billing integrations and automated reconciliation streamline a task that otherwise consumes hours per campaign.
AI adds measurable value to political advertising in two areas: pre-activation planning and campaign optimization.
On the optimization side, AI-powered bidding can process far more data signals than any human media buyer, adjusting bids and allocations in near-real-time based on performance data. For campaigns running CTV, audio, display, and social simultaneously, automated optimization improves performance without requiring additional headcount. Basis' SmartBid technology processes dozens of performance signals throughout the day to make continuous, goal-aligned adjustments across the full media mix. In testing, SmartBid has delivered a 133% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS).
On the planning side, tools like Compass by Basis represent a shift in how campaigns can approach pre-activation workflows. Compass generates media strategies by synthesizing uploaded campaign briefs, analyzing market data, and utilizing Basis' proprietary omnichannel IMPACT framework. The output includes a proposed media strategy, channel mix recommendations, targeting recommendations with named audience personas, and a presentation deck. Agency teams can then refine the strategy through a back-and-forth conversation with the Compass agent before plans flow directly into campaign activation. Every recommendation includes clear reasoning, so teams can see what's driving each allocation and adjust the strategy as needed.
For political advertisers managing multiple races simultaneously, or for consultancies handling campaigns across several states, this kind of planning acceleration can be the difference between launching on time and falling behind.
That said, AI should augment strategic judgment, not replace it. The strongest platforms automate mechanical tasks and surface recommendations while preserving full human control over strategic decisions. Political campaigns that differentiate through audience insight, creative strategy, and local market expertise need platforms that enhance those capabilities rather than attempting to automate them away.
The following checklist summarizes the platform capabilities political advertisers should evaluate for the 2026 midterm cycle.
Channel coverage. Does the platform support CTV, programmatic display and video, streaming audio, DOOH, social (Meta, Google, TikTok, Snapchat), search, and direct publisher buying from a single workflow?
CTV inventory access. Which premium publishers are accessible? How many PMPs are pre-approved for political? Does the platform support programmatic guaranteed buying? Does it offer cross-channel reach measurement against linear TV?
Political targeting. Does the platform support congressional district, state legislative district, DMA, and hyperlocal targeting? Which voter data providers integrate directly? How fast is voter file activation? Does the platform support cross-device and household-level targeting?
Activation speed. Can the platform move from brief to live campaign across channels in hours? Does planning connect directly to activation without manual reformatting?
Pacing and optimization. Does the platform provide real-time cross-channel pacing? Can budget be shifted between channels mid-flight from a single interface? Does the platform offer AI-powered bidding that optimizes across the full media mix?
Brand safety and compliance. Does the platform include DAA Political Ad Icon support, rapid creative review, contextual controls, and verification partner integrations? Does it include fraud prevention tools?
Streaming audio. Does the platform support programmatic audio alongside CTV and display within the same workflow?
AI capabilities. Does the platform offer AI-powered optimization and planning tools? Do those tools preserve human control over strategic decisions? Do AI recommendations include transparent reasoning?
Service flexibility. Can the platform scale from self-serve to fully managed execution based on campaign needs?
Political expertise. Does the platform provider have a dedicated political advertising practice with experience across election cycles?
Basis is an omnichannel advertising platform with a built-in DSP, built for political and advocacy advertising. It has served political advertisers for two decades, supporting thousands of campaigns, independent expenditure committees, and issue advocacy advertisers since 2006. In the 2024 cycle alone, the Candidates & Causes team supported more than 1,400 state and local campaigns, managing over $130 million in political ad spend. Basis brings all necessary capabilities together in one platform built for the operational demands of political advertising.
The 2026 midterms will test every political advertiser's ability to move fast, spend efficiently, and reach the right voters across a fragmented media environment. The platform you choose determines whether your team spends the final 30 days executing strategy or wrestling with disconnected tools.
What makes political advertising platform requirements different from commercial media buying?
Political advertising operates on a fixed deadline with no flexibility. Election Day does not move, and the spending cadence compresses heavily into the final weeks. Platforms need to support rapid activation, real-time pacing under extreme time pressure, political-specific targeting (congressional districts, voter file data), compliance tools for political ad disclosure, and inventory relationships with publishers that accept political advertising.
What platforms help nonprofits and advocacy groups run digital advertising?
Nonprofits and advocacy groups are best served by an omnichannel platform with a built-in demand-side platform (DSP) that specializes in political and issue advocacy advertising, with built-in compliance and flexible service tiers. Basis is one such platform: its Candidates & Causes practice has served political and advocacy advertisers since 2006, including candidates, campaigns, PACs, independent expenditure committees, issue advocacy groups, nonprofits, and ballot measure committees. The practice pairs omnichannel activation and pre-negotiated political inventory with disclosure and brand safety tools, geopolitical and issue-based targeting, and a team of 40+ political subject matter experts—so organizations of any size can run compliant digital campaigns across CTV, programmatic, audio, and search from a single workflow.
How early should political campaigns lock in CTV inventory?
Early—ideally before September. Programmatic video CPMs in 2024 nearly doubled the election cycle average in November and increased 50%+ in October. Campaigns that secure PMP deals and programmatic guaranteed pricing before September will have a significant cost advantage over those relying solely on open exchange buying during peak season.
Can smaller campaigns benefit from the same platforms used by major races?
Yes. Platforms with flexible service tiers accommodate campaigns at different scales. Self-serve access gives experienced political media buyers full control, while managed service options support campaigns with smaller teams or less programmatic experience. The operational efficiency gains from automation — faster campaign setup, unified reporting, automated pacing — benefit campaigns regardless of budget size.
How should political advertisers think about streaming audio in their media mix?
Audio represented just 3% of political ad spend in 2024 despite voters spending over 21% of their media time with audio content. That gap means lower CPMs and less competitive inventory compared to CTV, particularly during the October-November sprint. Campaigns that activate streaming audio through the same platform used for CTV and display can add the channel without additional operational overhead.
What role does AI play in political advertising platforms?
AI delivers value in two areas: campaign optimization (automated bidding, pacing, and budget allocation based on real-time performance data) and pre-activation planning (generating media strategies and channel mix recommendations from campaign briefs). The strongest platforms use AI to accelerate mechanical tasks while preserving human control over strategic decisions like audience definition, budget allocation, and creative messaging.
What is geopolitical targeting in political advertising?
Geopolitical targeting allows political advertisers to serve ads based on political boundaries—congressional districts, state legislative districts, DMAs, ZIP codes, and other jurisdiction-level geographies—rather than relying solely on demographic or behavioral audience segments. This capability is especially important during redistricting cycles, when district boundaries shift and campaigns need to reach voters within updated lines. During the 2022 midterms, Basis data showed that nearly 20% of political programmatic ads used geopolitical targeting, with 51% of those targeting by congressional district and 32% by state senate district. For the 2026 cycle, with redistricting underway in states including California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah, platforms that support targeting by updated district boundaries give campaigns a structural advantage in reaching the right voters.
What is issue advocacy advertising?
Issue advocacy advertising is paid messaging that promotes a policy position, cause, or ballot measure rather than a specific candidate for office. It is run by advocacy organizations, nonprofits, trade associations, PACs, and ballot measure committees to shape public opinion, mobilize supporters, and influence legislation. Like candidate advertising, issue advocacy is subject to platform disclosure policies and, in many cases, state and federal reporting requirements, so advocacy advertisers benefit from platforms with built-in compliance and disclosure tools. Basis supports issue advocacy advertisers through its Candidates & Causes practice, pairing compliant omnichannel activation with geopolitical and issue-based targeting and dedicated political expertise.
Key Takeaways
Picture this: The weekend is finally here, it’s game time, and you’ve got your homemade nachos all set to go (your secret ingredient: home-pickled jalapenos!). You plop down on the couch, crack open your first beer, turn on the big screen and...shoot. Where’s the game? Didn’t you read something about Amazon securing the rights for this season? No wait, that was Peacock...or was it Apple TV+? ESPN+? Maybe TBS? Or TNT? One of the Ts? Fox? CBS? Hulu? YouTube TV? Is this one of the games on Netflix? Why can’t you find it?! Was there ever even a game today? THE NACHOS ARE GETTING COLD!
Tuning in to live sports used to be so simple. And we’re not even talking about 50+ years ago, when that meant “going to the game” or “turning on the radio” for 95% of your live sports consumption. As recently as the 2000s, when it came to sports broadcasts, there were the major networks, ESPN, an occasional game on one of the Turner channels, and that pretty much was it.
Today, sports leagues are scattering their broadcast rights around like digital Johnny Appleseeds, adding to an already-complex CTV and streaming video environment and creating new challenges for advertisers and consumers alike. This fragmentation is reshaping sports advertising as we know it—forcing brands to rethink where (and how) they run sports ads to reach today’s fans. The clear reason for this shift? Money—big money. US sports TV and streaming rights are forecast to reach $32.8 billion in 2026 and are forecast to surpass $36 billion in 2030. All this has taken place in the face of (or, perhaps, helped fuel) cord cutting that drives essential revenue away from traditional broadcasters and into the pockets of streaming services.
In light of these dramatic shifts, how can digital advertisers effectively reach and connect with sports fans? And is navigating the disparate live sports landscape worth all the trouble? (Spoiler alert: yes, yes it is!) Read on to learn all about it.
The biggest shift in sports advertising over the past several years is where games actually air, and that change is reshaping every advertiser’s media plan.
First off, let’s look at some of those new (or, at least, new-ish) sports broadcast partnerships, an area that’s seen some significant departures from the “old normal” in recent years:
The fact that so many major American sports entities have granted exclusive broadcast rights to streaming platforms marks a significant shift in the industry. And with digital live sports viewership surpassing linear TV in 2023—a gap that’s only widened since—it’s clear that the streaming-first revolution in sports broadcasting has arrived.
Just as meaningful is the price those companies paid for their live sports streaming rights: $200 million per year from Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and NBCUniversal for WNBA games; $5 billion over the next ten years from Netflix for the WWE “Raw” programming; $1 billion per year from Amazon for their weekly regular season NFL matchup; a reported $2+ billion per year from Google for Sunday Ticket; and $150 million from Netflix for its two Christmas day NFL games in 2024.
To make up for these kinds of skyrocketing costs, linear broadcasters and streaming video platforms alike are turning to two main revenue sources: subscription price hikes and—you guessed it!—advertising. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how (and why) advertisers can make the most of this evolving landscape.
Live sports advertising offers brands a rare combination of guaranteed reach, deeply engaged audiences, and rich targeting opportunities—making sports ads some of the most valuable placements in any media plan.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans are sports fans. And people who watch sports aren’t going to catch a replay of the game once it hits Netflix in a few months—they’re going to watch it live. This is a valuable “guaranteed” audience upon which platforms and advertisers alike can place outsized value compared to other broadcasts (no wonder sports tend to dominate lists of the most-watched US broadcasts year after year). When brands want to ensure they are meeting a large, built-in audience all at once, there are few opportunities quite like live sports.
Which is not to say that brands can’t benefit from advertising against other sports content, such as highlights, clips, and replays (more on this in a bit!). Those often represent prime contextual advertising opportunities, whether via contextual partners like Comscore and DoubleVerify, or with specific publishers such as the AP, Gannett, or (of course) ESPN.
On the more local level, no matter what embarrassment, scandal, or years-long losing streak might afflict their favorite team, fans tend to “root root root for the home team” through thick and thin. For advertisers that want to geotarget, sporting events often post remarkable ratings in specific markets—and fan loyalty can translate to brand loyalty. No wonder organizations of all kinds pay out top dollars to be the official beer, official pizza, official bank, official cryptocurrency platform, or even official HR/payroll provider of your hometown team.
Another key factor that’s fueling sports viewership? Sports betting, which has gone from being largely prohibited under federal law (except in Nevada) before 2018 to being all over American sports coverage today. After the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban that year, individual states began legalizing it, and total consumer spending on sports betting has since skyrocketed—surpassing $100 billion for the first time in 2023, and expected to exceed $235 billion in 2028.
This growing excitement around sports betting is delivering new, passionate audiences to live sports, with over a fifth of US adults reporting that they have personally engaged with sports betting within the last year. And if someone is spending money on the game, they’re a whole lot more likely to tune in, with 85% of sports bettors saying it makes them more interested in watching the games.
As for where and how they’re watching...
Nearly 165 million Americans regularly watch live sports—almost 50% of the total population. Perhaps even more notably, more than 122 million of those viewers currently tune in on digital devices, and that number is projected to rise to 141 million by 2029. Yep: Just like the rest of the video world, the future of live sports advertising is digital.
Of course, as is the case with that larger digital video environment, the increasingly disparate nature of sports broadcast agreements (even in light of new offerings like ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service) is only adding to the complexity and fragmentation that mark the digital video and CTV space. Among avid sports fans, 69% feel it’s a hassle to navigate multiple providers to watch the same sport and 59% feel it’s gotten more difficult to find what they want to watch, and you can only imagine how frustrating that must be when the start of the game is rapidly approaching (and your nachos are getting cold...) And for advertisers, the evolution from a few reliable live sports hubs to numerous broadcasters across multiple channels can mean added complexity in campaigns targeting these audiences. So as streaming becomes the norm for live sports, advertisers and viewers alike are adapting to some growing pains.
That said, to their credit, the big tech companies that have waded into the live sports streaming wars are taking crucial steps toward optimizing benefits for advertisers. Prime Video, now a major home for NBA coverage, has rolled out interactive tools like “key moments,” advanced stats, and personalized bet tracking for NBA broadcasts. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal and Walmart launched integrated shoppable experiences across both linear and streaming sports inventory in late 2024, bringing retail media into live broadcasts. On the measurement front, Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel tool now includes live sports as a core category, and leagues are pushing for streaming platforms to share first-party metrics to support accurate ad pricing.
Even the more traditional homes of live sports have readily embraced the potential of streaming those events for maximum impact. NBC's presentation of Super Bowl LX in February 2026 drew 125.6 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL+—making it the second most-watched Super Bowl ever, behind only the prior year's Super Bowl LIX (127.7 million viewers). The fact that both records now factor in streaming and digital audiences alongside linear underscores how integral those platforms have become to live sports measurement. And annual events like the Masters golf championship and NCAA men’s basketball tournament have long had authorized (and ad-filled) streams as part of their overall broadcast packages. As viewers increasingly flock to OTT and CTV for their live sports consumption, brands will have new ways to personalize and target these consumers as part of their cross-channel marketing strategies.
Digital marketing in sports now extends well beyond traditional in-game commercials. Brands are building sports-focused campaigns that span social media, athlete partnerships, branded content within sports podcasts, contextual ads around highlights and recaps, and programmatic placements on sports news sites and apps.
Sports fans spend significant time on digital platforms throughout the week, not just during games—and they respond well to content that speaks to their fandom. For advertisers, that creates year-round opportunities to stay top-of-mind with a passionate audience, well beyond the few hours a game is live.
Speaking of which...
The digital evolution of live sports broadcasts goes beyond individual devices.
More and more fans are watching the game on digital platforms, particularly bigger screens like CTV. Sports viewership on YouTube’s connected TV app grew by 30% in 2024—a clear signal that connected TV (CTV) has become a major player in sports advertising.
But the real secret weapon for advertisers may be resting in your pocket (or your hand) right now: smartphones. Sports broadcasts present a unique cross-platform marketing opportunity, with viewers often using second screens to look up players and team statistics, use social media to engage with others, watch other games on a separate device, place bets, and more—all while watching live sports at home.
This multi-device behavior creates valuable targeting opportunities that extend well beyond game time. Sports fans are a widely targetable audience segment through private marketplaces (PMPs) like Tapjoy, and they can be further segmented via top data providers like Alliant (golf), eXelate (NBA), and Cuebiq (NHL). These tools help advertisers continue to market to viewers even after the game clock hits 0:00. Put it all together, and sports programming offers a powerful way to consistently reach and remarket to specific target audiences across multiple devices.
Beyond retargeting viewers across devices during and immediately after games, there’s also a significant opportunity to build upon the momentum of live sports and continue the conversation long after the final whistle. Sports fans are often ideal audiences for marketers as they are deeply engaged when it comes to their favorite teams. Considering the fact that 41% of fans are already locked into their favorite pro sports team by the age of 12 (and 62% by the age of 17), it’s clear that sports fans are an active, impassioned audience ripe for engagement. By leaning into this passion and connecting with these fans within relevant content related to their favorite teams, marketers can further deepen brand loyalty and drive meaningful engagement.
Whether by running ads alongside clips and replays, within sports shows, or even alongside social media content, advertisers have ever-expanding opportunities to engage with sports fans beyond live events themselves—and perhaps even to persuade more viewers to tune into live games. The power of such placements is underscored by deals like the 2024 NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery agreement which includes the studio show Inside the NBA, as well as other NBA content like Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, a social media network that distributes sports clips and content.
In addition to using ad placements within gameday-adjacent content, brands and marketers can also harness the power of sports by working with athlete influencers. Take, for instance, rugby star and Olympian Ilona Maher. She rose to fame not only for her powerful presence and performance on the field, but also for her active presence on social media—where she now has over five million followers on Instagram and works with major brands like Barbie and Maybelline. Additionally, many athletes have also started their own podcasts (like Angel Reese’s “Unapologetically Angel” and the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights”), offering brands the opportunity to place high-impact ads that connect with fans within their shows.
Sports offer brands a unique opportunity to connect with deeply passionate and engaged audiences, both during and outside of the game. By leveraging gameday-adjacent content and collaborating with athlete influencers, brands and marketers can tap into the enthusiasm of sports fans to build stronger connections, deepen brand loyalty, and drive meaningful engagement across a variety of platforms.
Sporting events are a fixture of American culture. From Super Bowl Sunday every winter to the WNBA Finals every summer, live sports are a reliable way to bring people together in front of their TVs, laptops, and other streaming devices to catch the action (and, of course, the commercials). And even as the way fans consume their sports continues to evolve hand-in-hand with the rest of the video realm, advertisers will look to live sports as a pillar of their omnichannel marketing strategies. In short: It’s a home run opportunity for brands to hit their goals, assist in the revenue-driving process, and score some big wins.
(And yes, there were seven sports puns in that last sentence. Touchdown.)
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The role of CTV in live sports advertising is expected to dramatically increase in the years ahead. Check out our CTV advertising guide for tips on everything from CTV campaign best practices, to safeguards against CTV ad fraud, to effective targeting tactics, and much, much more.
As 2026 progresses, brands are taking a harder look at their agency relationships.
A full 85% of US B2C marketing executives plan to review their media agencies this year. That level of reevaluation reflects a broader shift in what brands want from their agency partners, and what they’re no longer willing to accept.
Agencies are feeling this pressure. Some 65.3% of agency professionals have had clients move work in-house within the last year, and 87.3% say the traditional agency model is broken or heading in that direction. This leaves brands in a difficult position. As the industry transforms, they’re evaluating agency partners against rising expectations—sharper AI judgment, leaner operations, clearer business storytelling—while agencies are still evolving to meet them. In this context, asking the right questions can separate partners built for where the industry is going from those still operating on where it’s been.
Below are five questions worth asking before signing a contract, renewing one, or kicking off a review:
First, brands should start with the structural questions nobody wants to open a pitch with: Who owns the data? Who owns the tech stack? What gets packed up and sent with the brand if the relationship ends, and what stays behind?
This matters more in 2026 than it did even two years ago. The share of full-service and media agencies managing eight or more tools has more than doubled since 2024 (from 22.1% to 46.7%), with more than a third now juggling 10 or more tools. Every additional tool is another place where a brand’s data, historical insights, and optimization learnings can live with the agency rather than with the brand itself. When the agency changes, the brand often has to start from scratch.
The agencies worth partnering with in 2026 are comfortable with portability and clear about ownership. They can articulate exactly what a brand owns, where that data sits, and how it would transfer in a transition. Better still, they’re open to operating inside a brand’s owned media infrastructure rather than requiring the brand to operate inside theirs. When the tools, the data, and the vendor relationships belong to the brand, a roster change doesn’t mean starting over.
As a practical first step, brands can ask for a consultative audit of how an agency’s stack maps to their own. They can explore where it complements, where it duplicates, and what a brand should own directly to protect long-term flexibility, regardless of who handles execution. That distinction signals whether an agency is confident competing on the quality of its strategy and service rather than the stickiness of its tooling.
Asking whether an agency uses AI no longer yields much signal—it’s used at more than 99% of agencies today, with nearly 60% of professionals using it daily. The sharper questions get at how agencies are using the technology, and where they are deciding not to apply it.
Strong answers to these questions will be specific. An agency should be able to name the workflows where AI is adding real value, those where it’s being tested with clear guardrails, and the places where the team has consciously held back. Brands should also expect a clear answer on how an agency protects sensitive data inside AI tools. A vague answer—or worse, a reflexive “AI everything”—is a red flag. AI tools can produce strategies that sound authoritative but aren’t rooted in reality: predictions built on extrapolated data, synthesized “case studies” that don’t reflect actual market outcomes, audience insights the tool inferred rather than verified, etc. When an agency builds recommendations on that kind of output without pressure-testing it, the brand ends up paying the cost.
A stronger approach sounds thoughtful and curious. Take AI-powered search as an example. Some platforms are monetizing chat-based search in ways that could eventually open powerful new audience and targeting opportunities. But right now, the data is a black box and the measurement is thin. An agency that says, “We’re watching this closely. Here’s what we want to see before we recommend it, and here’s how we’ll know when it’s ready,” is showing exactly the kind of judgment a brand is paying for. An agency that says, “Let’s just run ads there and see what happens,” is not.
The same principle applies as agencies adopt agentic AI. A partner that’s using agents to streamline planning cycles or improve reporting, for example, should be able to walk through what the agent is doing, where the underlying logic is coming from, what the human is still doing, and why that split makes sense.
Similar questions apply to how AI is used for ad creation. The IAB acknowledged the industry’s concerns around this use case in early 2026 with its first AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, citing a widening gap between how advertising executives think consumers feel about AI-generated ads and how those consumers actually feel. Brands should expect their agency partners to have a specific, current point of view on that gap, and for them to be able to explain the strategy behind their approach to using AI for creative generation. Clarity on these questions can help brands discern a meaningful AI strategy from something any agency could offer.
Transparency is a word nearly every agency uses. What it actually delivers in practice is where brands often find a gap. Some 88.3% of agency professionals say the digital advertising industry needs more of it, which is both encouraging and telling: The people closest to the work know there’s a gap worth closing.
Transparency doesn’t just mean a brand gets a dashboard. Dashboards show a brand what happened—real transparency explains the “why” behind what happened. Why was budget shifted between channels last week? Why was a particular audience deprioritized? Why did the team recommend pausing a tactic that was still performing? The “why” is where trust gets built, and it’s what brands should expect from their partners.
Transparency also shows up in how agencies handle pricing. The traditional structures—commission, FTE, billable hours—were built around the time-intensive, often-manual labor AI is now compressing or automating. The agencies adapting fastest are moving toward pricing tied to outputs and outcomes rather than hours, an evolution brands evaluating partners should welcome. Brands should expect the upside of that shift: clear fee structures, visibility into what’s a pass-through cost versus a markup, and flexibility on the pricing model itself, whether that’s project-based, IO-based, a clean percentage of media, or something custom to the engagement. Agencies that treat their pricing as a black box tend to treat a lot of other things that way too.
Over half of agency professionals (54.0%) say their client relationships are more strained today than they were two years ago. Much of that friction traces back to a storytelling gap. Agencies often speak in impressions, clicks, and conversion rates. Brands, on the other hand, answer to CFOs, boards, and a CMO role that has been reshaped in recent years to tie every dollar back to measurable business return.
The capability gap brands should explore with agency partners is the ability to connect campaign performance to business outcomes. In other words, they should look for agencies who can move from “We drove a 12% lift in CTR” to “We drove a 12% lift in CTR, and here’s how that shaped pipeline. Here’s what it suggests about audience intent, and here’s what we’d recommend next based on the business context you’ve shared with us.” That kind of translation and storytelling is the work agencies increasingly have to own, as connecting the dots between media activity and business impact is where real value gets created.
The agencies positioned to do this work well tend to have one thing in common: They’ve invested in connected infrastructure that pulls their work together across channels, so their teams aren’t spending the majority of their time stitching together data from disconnected tools. When the foundation is sound, human attention can shift to interpretation and strategy, which is where brands are actually trying to buy value in the first place.
Though a simple question, it’s a meaningful one. The top performing agencies in 2026 are proactive partners. They bring POVs on industry shifts before the brand has to chase them down. They flag emerging channels with a clear stance on whether they’re worth testing and why. They raise risks early, even if those risks might reduce their own scope of work.
A reactive relationship is one a brand has to manage, whereas a proactive one is one a brand can lean on. The difference shows up in small moments, like whether a weekly check-in brings new ideas to the table or just rehashes last week’s performance. But those small moments add up. Over a year, they can be the difference between an agency acting as a vendor and one acting as an extension of the brand’s own team.
The strongest version of this dynamic feels less like a brand managing an agency and more like a brand working with a trusted partner who’s actively looking out for its bottom line.
Brands are investing in digital advertising to drive business impact, and agencies too often deliver activity instead. Closing that gap, between what’s happening in a campaign and what it means for the business, is the real work of partnership in 2026.
The industry is in the middle of a structural reset. Revenue models are under pressure, AI is redefining what agency labor actually looks like, and brands have more options for how to get the work done. The brands that come out of this period with the strongest partnerships will be the ones asking the sharpest questions and holding out for agencies whose answers line up with how their business runs.
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Interested in a deeper look at what’s reshaping the agency business in 2026, including how agencies are thinking about AI, tech stack consolidation, and the future of their revenue models? Explore the 2026 Advertising Agency Report.
CTV is on track to account for more than half of all digital political ad dollars in 2026, but buying premium inventory effectively is getting harder. In this session of Basis’ 2026 Political Advertising Bootcamp, members of our Candidates & Causes team are joined by two seasoned political media practitioners for a candid, expert-level discussion on how to navigate the CTV landscape heading into the fall.
Watch now to learn what it actually takes to run CTV that delivers for political clients.
You’ll Learn:
Key Takeaways:
That streaming TV advertising playbook you relied on last year? It’s already outdated. Between shifting viewer behavior, emerging platforms, and growing concerns about inventory quality, the video ecosystem is changing fast.
By 2030, connected TV will capture more than 40% of global TV ad investment, reflecting a fundamental shift in how audiences consume video content. Today, however, linear TV still offers mass reach—which means advertisers must strategize around extracting maximum value now while planning for continued viewership declines. Meanwhile, the rise of social video, growing concerns about inventory quality, and complexities around addressability are reshaping what it means to run a successful video campaigns.
For advertisers building video strategies this year, understanding the nuances of this changing landscape is critical. Read on for six insights to guide your TV and CTV planning in 2026:
With nearly seven in 10 advertisers planning to increase their CTV spend in 2026, the industry’s commitment to CTV is continuing to accelerate. However, there's still an increasingly wide gap between ad spend and viewership: In 2027, there will be a 14-point gap between the percent of time US adults spend with CTV per day and the percent CTV ad spend makes up of total US ad spending.
CTV's advantages make this gap notable. The channel combines television's high-impact storytelling with digital precision targeting, superior completion rates, and direct attribution to consumer actions. In fact, three-quarters of American CTV owners prefer targeted ads to enhance their viewing experience, and more than one in five viewers have used their CTV devices to complete a purchase after seeing an ad. Add to this the emergence of new CTV ad formats and expanding inventory options, and it's clear that advertisers who match their spend to viewership now stand to gain significant competitive advantage before the market catches up.
But don’t write off linear TV just yet: While connected TV continues its steady climb, traditional television still delivers the kind of mass reach that many campaigns need, particularly those focused on driving brand awareness.
And no, this isn’t just your grandparents watching Jeopardy (or you watching Jeopardy, if Jeopardy is your thing!). Audiences across all age groups still tune in to traditional broadcasts, though younger generations are doing so less frequently than their older counterparts.
However, linear TV’s reach is eroding as more viewers shift to streaming alternatives: In 2026, CTV offers access to 15% more of the US population than linear. Advertisers must ensure their linear and CTV strategies complement each other in the short term, while planning for linear’s decline and the continued rise of CTV and social video.
This might look like running broad awareness campaigns on linear TV during high-profile events like live sports, then using CTV to extend reach to cord-cutters and younger viewers who don't watch traditional TV. Or, it could look like managing CTV campaigns with a platform that offers Open Addressable Ready (OAR) capabilities, which enable consistent, addressable campaigns across both linear and streaming using unified audience data and measurement. Advertisers should also allocate budget dynamically—shifting spend to CTV as linear reach declines, while maintaining traditional TV presence where it remains cost-effective.
Ultimately, success in streaming TV advertising lies in treating linear and CTV as complementary tools in a holistic video strategy that evolves alongside viewer behavior.
The boundaries between TV and social media are dissolving faster than audiences can scroll to the next video in their TikTok feed. This is especially true among younger audiences, with nearly 80% of young people aged 10-24 reporting that they watch movies or TV shows on social platforms.
Sports content, in particular, is driving social video engagement (as well as live CTV engagement): Between 2020 and 2024, the percentage of Americans who reported they watched live sports games on social media platforms in the last month grew by 34%.
Following these viewership trends, US advertisers invested more than $10 billion more in social video than in linear TV in 2025.
Recent spending trends show social video and CTV budgets are climbing while linear investments decline: In 2025, CTV and social video dominated the priority list for video advertising budgets, setting the stage for continued growth in 2026.
The living room TV? Still relevant. But today, it’s far from the only screen that matters for reaching video-watching audiences.
In 2026, buying inventory from a recognizable streaming service doesn’t guarantee your ads will appear in brand-safe, high-quality environments. As the streaming ecosystem has matured, the term “premium” has been applied so broadly that it’s lost much of its meaning. Spoiler alert: Slapping a well-known logo on an ad buy doesn’t automatically make it premium.
Much of what advertisers purchase on major platforms runs within long-tail apps, user-generated content channels, or bundled placements that offer minimal transparency. As a result, 15% of streaming TV ad spend is wasted in low-quality environments rather than premium streaming content.
Considering this, it’s critical that advertisers demand transparency from their CTV providers. Just as important is implementing quality controls when buying CTV inventory to ensure spend isn’t wasted on low-quality placements—for example, by checking in on campaigns midstream to make sure ads are showing up where intended. Overlaying ACR (automatic content recognition) data into CTV buys can also help by offering more precise visibility into placements, verifying exactly what content appeared on-screen when your ad ran.
Ultimately, premium placement in streaming comes from verification and control, not brand recognition alone.
While video strategies of the past focused on specific channels and distribution methods, the video strategies of the future will focus on following engaged audiences wherever they’re consuming content, regardless of the screen.
This means treating CTV, social video, and linear TV as complementary tools in a unified strategy rather than competing channels. Advertisers must align their content objectives with inventory-specific tactics across platforms. Broad awareness campaigns might justify run-of-content purchases, but performance-focused initiatives demand curated placements and app-level visibility.
The shift from channel-first to audience-first planning is showing up in how advertisers choose their partners: 66% of media buyers cite audience personalization capabilities as the most important factor when choosing video ad partners.
Marketing teams are implementing this audience-first approach by leveraging CTV targeting parameters including behavioral and demographic segmentation as well as content-level contextual targeting to connect with viewers in high-quality environments—then extending those learnings across social video and other channels. AI-powered, all-channel platforms can help with this by automatically applying these learnings to optimize buys across channels.
Streaming TV’s promise of precise, addressable advertising faces a critical data quality challenge. Many platforms claim they can offer addressability, but the accuracy varies significantly based on the kind (and quality) of data powering it.
IP-based targeting, which many platforms rely on, suffers from significant accuracy problems. IP-to-postal linkages are correct just 13% of the time on average, while IP-to-email connections hit the mark only 16% of the time. Yes, that means they’re wrong a whopping 87% and 84% of the time, respectively! These error rates undermine the targeting precision that makes addressable TV attractive in the first place.
As the addressability landscape develops, advertisers must understand what kind of addressability the platforms they invest in offer. To accomplish this, teams should ask their CTV partners specific questions: What data sources power your targeting capabilities? How accurate is your addressability, and how do you measure it? Do you primarily use deterministic data or probabilistic data? Platforms that can’t answer these questions transparently may not offer the precision they promise. And to enhance precision, advertisers should layer first-party and deterministic data—which offer the highest level of targeting accuracy—into their buys.
Today’s streaming landscape offers tremendous opportunities for advertisers willing to navigate its complexities. Success requires moving beyond assumptions about premium inventory, channel effectiveness, and targeting precision, and crafting strategies grounded in audience behavior, content quality, and data transparency.
Six Key Takeaways:
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Want to dive deeper into what’s shaping the future of advertising? Check out Rewinding to Fast Forward: The 2026 Digital Advertising Trends Report for more insights into how the media landscape is evolving and what it means for your marketing strategy.
A leading political marketing and advertising agency was working on a high-profile ballot initiative in California that was drawing heavy linear spend from both sides of the issue. To reach new voters with counter-messaging, the agency needed a smarter, more cost-effective approach to extend reach beyond saturated linear environments. To do so, they turned to Basis.
With Basis, the agency was able to leverage CTV as a more cost-effective media buying strategy across four key markets (Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco). After the agency shifted more spend to CTV/OTT as it outperformed linear TV, the client sharpened their narrative on how the channel can inform, persuade voters, and reach new audiences. Deploying this approach, the campaign sourced 94% net new voters via CTV.
Performance:
OTT/CTV: Unique Audience: 4,821,292 | Reach: 14.55%
Total TV (Linear + Digital): Unique Audience: 19,563,025 | Reach: 59.05%
Total - All Platforms: Unique Audience: 24,095,505 | Reach: 72.74% | Incremental Audience: 4,532,480
1) Customized Targeting Strategies
The campaign deployed a precision CTV strategy using Basis’ audience matching and Comscore insights, targeting both known voter pools and identifying new audiences. This significantly extended the incremental reach with limited overlap (6%) between CTV and linear viewership.
2) Tailored Partner Recommendations
With Comscore’s Advanced Reach Measurement, Basis delivered detailed market-level reports and insights, uncovering new voter segments to target.
3) Regular Optimization & Support
Basis monitored campaign delivery daily and optimized placements to maximize impact while controlling frequency. This approach maintained efficient exposure across channels throughout the campaign.
4) Custom Political-Approved Private Marketplaces (PMPs)
Basis built custom PMPs featuring premium CTV, OTT, and audio inventory approved for political advertising. This maximized the campaign’s ability to reach voters in high-quality, compliant environments at scale.
The client is a leading marketing and advertising agency specializing in political campaigns, combining strategic insight with agile execution to boost brand presence, deliver measurable digital results, and help clients reach the right audiences.
Industry: Marketing & Advertising, Candidates & Causes
Company Size: 21-50 employees
Locations: USA
Key Goal: Increase brand awareness
The advertising agency world is at a crossroads.
After years of mounting pressure, the forces reshaping the industry have reached a critical threshold. It's one that threatens not just how agencies operate, but whether the business model that has sustained them for decades can survive. Client relationships are more strained. Profits are shrinking. Tech stacks are sprawling. And AI—the technology most agencies are counting on to turn things around—is poised to reshape everything from revenue models to headcount.
To understand what this moment means for the advertising industry, Basis surveyed more than 200 professionals at leading agencies, exploring how they feel about their jobs, their agencies, and the forces shaping their futures.
Select findings include:
Despite these challenges, advertising agencies still have ample opportunity. Global advertising spend is projected to cross $1 trillion for the first time in 2026, and brands still need partners who can help them navigate an increasingly complex media landscape. But the agencies best positioned to capture that opportunity may look very different from those that have dominated the last decade.
Download the full report today for the complete findings, along with strategic takeaways for agency leaders navigating the road ahead.
Every election cycle, political campaigns compete with nonpolitical advertisers for the same inventory—driving up costs, limiting availability, and creating brand safety challenges. In 2026, that pressure is set to reach new heights.
The 2026 midterm elections are on track to be the most expensive midterms in US history. Political ad spending this cycle is projected to reach $10.8 billion, a 20%-plus increase over the 2022 midterms’ $8.9 billion and nearly on par with the $11.2 billion spent during the 2024 presidential cycle.
The forces driving that spending are significant. Control of both chambers of Congress is up for grabs, with 35 Senate seats in play, including special elections in Florida and Ohio. All 435 House seats will be contested, and a record number of House members are not seeking reelection, creating open-seat races where neither candidate benefits from incumbency. And with a deeply unpopular president, a war started without congressional authorization, and rocketing gas prices setting the backdrop for the cycle, the political environment is primed for aggressive spending on both sides.
For nonpolitical advertisers, this translates to tighter inventory, higher CPMs, platform-specific restrictions, and heightened brand safety concerns across channels. That complexity is compounded by challenges resulting from a fragmented media environment and the rise of AI-generated content. Here’s what marketers need to know heading into peak political spending:
Key Takeaways:
During the 2024 election cycle, political ad spending totaled $11.2 billion, with the presidential race alone accounting for $3.2 billion. Without that top-of-ticket race in 2026, spending will concentrate more heavily on congressional and gubernatorial contests—especially in the states and media markets where those races are most competitive.
On the Senate side, spending is projected to hit $2.8 billion, slightly surpassing the 2024 record. Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, and North Carolina are the cycle’s most closely watched races, with multiple contests likely to surpass $500 million in ad investment. States like Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas could also attract significant spending as Democrats pursue pickup opportunities against a 53-47 Republican majority. And the pressure is building early: Campaigns are moving up their ad timelines to secure inventory before rising demand pushes them out of competitive markets.
Spending on House races, on the other hand, is projected to reach $2.2 billion, marking the first time spending on the chamber will exceed the $2 billion mark. With competitive seats concentrated in the New York and Los Angeles media markets—12 of the projected 40 competitive seats sit in those two designated market areas (DMAs)—nonpolitical advertisers in those regions will likely feel outsized pressure.
Gubernatorial spending is expected to hit $1.95 billion, with open seats in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin driving substantial activity in those states. Arizona, Nevada, and New Jersey are also projected to see significant gubernatorial ad spending, with New Jersey’s race alone expected to more than triple its 2021 investment. And downballot spending, driven by ballot propositions and state legislative races, will account for 36% of all political ad spending, representing $3.9 billion.
The bottom line for nonpolitical advertisers is that political spending in 2026 will not be distributed evenly across the country. It will cluster in specific states, specific DMAs, and specific channels.
Political advertising follows a predictable cadence. Historical data shows that roughly 50% of a cycle’s political dollars run in the 30 days before Election Day, with about 25% concentrated in the final 10 days. Early voting may push some of that spending slightly earlier in 2026, but the Labor Day-to-Election Day window will remain the period of highest intensity.
Sports programming will intensify the pressure. The FIFA World Cup, hosted in the US, Canada, and Mexico from June through July, will drive significant demand for sports-adjacent inventory, particularly on CTV and streaming platforms. That demand will overlap with the early stages of general election spending, which means CPMs in sports-adjacent inventory could start climbing well before the traditional September-through-November political window. Then, from Labor Day through Election Day, college football and the NFL will overlap directly with peak political ad spending. And with political advertisers increasingly using live sports as a targeting proxy—reaching voters in specific states and DMAs based on the games they watch—nonpolitical advertisers competing for the same inventory in battleground states should expect particularly elevated CPMs during that window and plan their sports buys accordingly.
Geographically, the hottest markets will track directly with competitive races. States projected to see the highest total political spending include California ($1.1 billion), Michigan ($936 million), Georgia ($757 million), North Carolina ($669 million), and Texas ($556 million). Advertisers with heavy presence in those states should plan for elevated CPMs and limited premium inventory throughout Q3 and Q4.
Broadcast television still commands the largest share of political ad spend, at just under 50%. But that share is effectively flat from the last cycle, and broadcast revenue is actually declining slightly from 2024. The growth story is in CTV.
Connected TV is the only media channel projected to see increased spending over the 2024 presidential cycle. Spending on the channel is projected to reach $2.4 billion in 2026, up from $2.34 billion in 2024, and accounting for 23% of total political ad spend.
Several factors are accelerating this shift. First, cord-cutting continues to reshape the television market. Streaming captured 47.5% of all TV viewing in December 2025, while cable’s share continued to decline. As audiences—including older demographics who have historically been the most cable-loyal—continue migrating to streaming platforms, political advertisers are following them to CTV. At the same time, CTV’s targeting capabilities allow political advertisers to reach specific geographies and demographics with precision that broadcast cannot match.
For nonpolitical advertisers, this creates a compounding inventory challenge. Major CTV platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video do not currently accept political advertising, which pushes political dollars more heavily into platforms that do: Hulu, Roku, YouTube, and others. That concentration effect means CPMs on those platforms will spike and inventory could be tight, particularly in competitive markets during the September-through-November window. On the flip side, those same political-ad-free platforms represent inventory that nonpolitical advertisers can access without competing against campaign dollars at all.
Beyond linear and connected TV, digital spending on social platforms like Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and X will account for an estimated 13% of total political spend this cycle, down from 15% during the 2024 presidential cycle. That decline is consistent with typical midterm cycles, where social media and digital as a whole command a smaller share of spend without a presidential race on the ballot. Still, nonpolitical advertisers in battleground states should expect increased competition for display and online video inventory. And as political content—both paid and organic—saturates social feeds in the weeks before Election Day, ad environment quality and brand adjacency becomes harder to control.
Audio, meanwhile, remains one of the most underutilized channels in the political media mix, despite consumers spending a significant and growing share of their media time with audio content. For nonpolitical brands looking for less congested environments during peak political season, programmatic audio may offer an efficient alternative.
With so many different channel- and platform-specific considerations, omnichannel visibility is particularly important in 2026. Advertisers who can see and adjust all of these dynamics from a single vantage point—shifting budgets from high-pressure CTV inventory to less contested audio or display, for example— will be better positioned to make proactive, considered decisions rather than scrambling to adjust when pricing spikes hit.
Brand safety is a perennial concern during election years. In 2026, the continued rise of AI-generated political content adds a new layer of complexity for political and nonpolitical advertisers alike.
Deepfake political ads are already running in midterm campaigns. In March 2026, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released an 85-second deepfake video of James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, depicting a realistic but entirely fabricated version of the candidate reading old social media posts directly into the camera. Similar AI-generated attack ads have appeared in the Georgia Senate race and in state and local contests across the country.
There is no federal law governing the widespread use of AI in political advertising, and while 26 states have enacted some form of deepfake disclosure legislation, enforcement remains limited and laws vary widely in scope. At the same time, social media platforms like Meta and X have rolled back professional fact-checking programs in favor of community-based moderation, which can be slower to catch synthetic content, if it catches it at all.
For nonpolitical advertisers, this means the content environment around political news coverage, political ads, and social media will be more volatile and less predictable in 2026. The specific risks will vary by channel and by advertiser. Consider a healthcare brand whose display ads unexpectedly appear alongside coverage of an abortion ballot initiative, or a family-oriented retailer whose pre-roll video ads run ahead of an AI-generated political attack ad on YouTube. The brand safety risk is meaningful even when the adjacency is accidental. Three-quarters of consumers feel less favorably toward brands that advertise on sites that spread misinformation, and ads that avoid risky political content see a 32% lower cost per conversion and significantly higher success rate than those that appear alongside it.
Brand safety controls—including site-level block lists, keyword exclusions, and contextual targeting—will be critical, particularly for display and online video placements where ads appear directly alongside editorial and user-generated content. CTV presents fewer adjacency risks because ads appear within streaming content rather than alongside it. Agility is a major competitive advantage considering the brand safety risks that accompany the midterms. Advertisers who can quickly adjust placements, update exclusion lists, and monitor brand safety across channels from a single, unified platform will be better equipped to respond when conditions shift—whether a deepfake goes viral, a controversial ad surfaces, or a political story dominates a news cycle.
Navigating a $10.8 billion political advertising cycle requires both planning and flexibility. Here are practical considerations for the months ahead:
The 2026 midterms will test nonpolitical advertisers' ability to maintain reach and performance in a historically expensive and complex media environment. With a record amount of political spending projected to flood broadcast TV, CTV, and digital channels, the pressure will be acute in battleground states and high-profile DMAs from Labor Day through Election Day.
What makes this cycle particularly challenging is the convergence of multiple pressures at once: record midterm spending, a shifting CTV landscape where political dollars are concentrating on a subset of platforms, AI-generated content complicating brand safety, and major sports programming overlapping directly with peak political season. Advertisers who treat these as isolated issues rather than compounding ones risk being caught off guard by pricing spikes and inventory shortages that are already predictable.
The post-election window is worth planning for as well. November through December historically offers favorable pricing as political dollars exit the market. Brands that build their Q3 and Q4 pacing with that rebound in mind can recover reach and efficiency quickly.
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For more on how political advertising is shaping this year’s cycle, check out The Ultimate Guide to Political Advertising in 2026.
Lighthouse Digital Media partnered with Basis as part of its broader advertising operating system to strengthen campaign execution, improve efficiency, and scale performance across channels. Combining their strategic planning and optimization expertise with Basis’ automation and workflow capabilities, the team delivered measurable value and exceeded client expectations.
Lighthouse Digital Media is a full-service digital advertising partner specializing in search, social, video, programmatic, and analytics. They pair strategic planning with transparent reporting to deliver data-driven campaigns that exceed performance benchmarks, delivering measurable, repeatable results.
Lighthouse needed a unified platform to simplify multi-channel activation and billing while delivering strong click-through-rate (CTR) and video completion performance for a nine‑month financial services awareness campaign.
They needed a solution that enabled:
Lighthouse Digital Media approached this campaign by focusing on performance, operational efficiency, and brand integrity across a complex multi-channel activation. Lighthouse evaluated how to best manage campaign complexity while preserving the agility and hands-on optimization approach that differentiates its client work.
Basis served as the technology partner that enabled the Lighthouse team to efficiently activate campaigns, manage workflows, and optimize performance across tactics and channels—freeing the team to focus on strategy, audience insights, and performance refinement rather than administrative execution.
With a $182,000 budget and an 8-month campaign flight, Lighthouse developed and executed a cross-channel strategy that leveraged display and video tactics across multiple audience segments and targeting approaches.
Lighthouse leveraged Basis to execute a scalable, multi-channel campaign strategy while maintaining a high level of control and optimization throughout the engagement.
Results:
“Technology is most valuable when it enables smarter decision-making, not when it replaces it. Basis provides the infrastructure and efficiencies that allow our team to stay focused on what we do best: strategy, optimization, and delivering best possible results for our clients.” - Lighthouse Digital Media