2026 Midterms: $8.5B Ad Spend Shifts to Digital

Political ad spending hit $8.5 billion in the 2024 election cycle, and that number is only going to climb as we head toward the 2026 midterms. That kind of money means the competition for a voter’s attention is ferocious, and you can’t get by with a generic paid media plan anymore. As campaigns staff up for the next cycle, how are they going to actually reach an electorate that’s splintered across a dozen different screens and platforms?

Digital Ad Spending Projected to Surpass Broadcast by 15%

The move from traditional broadcast to digital platforms is a fundamental restructuring of how campaigns spend their money. An IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report from late 2025 predicted that digital ad spending will beat broadcast by 15% in the next election cycle. This means digital must be the absolute center of any campaign’s paid media strategy.

My read on this is simple: campaigns still pouring most of their cash into linear television are already behind the curve. Voters, especially younger people and city dwellers, just don’t watch traditional TV anymore. They’re on streaming services, scrolling social media, and checking news aggregators. A campaign trying to reach suburban families in Cobb County, Georgia, for example, is going to get a much better ROI on Roku and Amazon Freevee than on local Atlanta network affiliates. The targeting on these platforms lets you tailor messages with incredible precision, hitting specific households based on their viewing habits, income, or political leanings inferred from their online activity. This isn’t just about throwing a TV ad online. It demands a total rethink of your creative for shorter, interactive, and mobile-first formats.

Connected TV (CTV) Ad Impressions Up 45% Year-Over-Year

The explosion of Connected TV (CTV) is probably the single biggest shift in political advertising right now. It’s not a surprise that a Nielsen Total Audience Report from Q4 2025 found a 45% year-over-year jump in CTV ad impressions for political content, considering how many people have “cut the cord” and only watch streaming video. CTV gives you the big-screen feel of TV with the sharp targeting of digital.

For practitioners, this means CTV is now a core part of the budget, not some experimental line item. I’d argue that campaigns should put at least 30% of their digital video spend into CTV, buying inventory on Hulu Ad Manager, Peacock Ads, and the programmatic platforms that bundle CTV placements. The power to hit a specific congressional district, or even just a few zip codes inside it, with a relevant ad on a living room TV is a massive advantage. Imagine running an ad for a candidate in Georgia’s 6th district that only shows up during a streamed local newscast on Sling TV for households known to vote in primaries. That kind of precision was just a fantasy with old-school broadcast. Plus, some CTV ads are interactive, letting you run direct calls to action like “text to donate” or “scan QR code to learn more,” which finally connects passive viewing to real-world engagement.

First-Party Data Activation Boosts Ad Performance by 35%

With privacy regulations tightening and third-party cookies on their way out, a campaign’s own first-party data is the most valuable asset for targeting. A recent HubSpot analysis showed that campaigns activating their own data, from voter files, donor lists, and email subscribers, saw ad performance jump by an average of 35%. That’s measured in real-world metrics like click-throughs and conversions.

My own experience absolutely backs this up. Just using the generic demographic targeting offered by ad platforms is a surefire way to get mediocre results. The real gains come from uploading and activating your own lists. A campaign can, for instance, upload a hashed list of known supporters to Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager to build lookalike audiences, which finds new potential voters who act like your current base. More importantly, you can use those same lists to exclude known opponents or people you’ve already hit through other channels, which stops ad fatigue and saves money. It’s all about relevance. An ad that speaks to a voter’s specific concerns because it’s based on their past interaction with the campaign will always perform better. Campaigns that treat their data like a strategic weapon, not just a spreadsheet of contacts, will always win.

Social Media Micro-Targeting Now Requires Psychographic Segmentation

Demographic targeting on social media is still table stakes, but it’s losing its edge because voters are more complicated than their age or zip code. The thing that will set campaigns apart in 2026 is psychographic segmentation, which is about understanding a voter’s values, attitudes, and lifestyle. Late 2025 data from eMarketer showed campaigns using these advanced psychographic models got 20% higher engagement on their social ads than those just using basic demographics.

This means you have to get more specific. Don’t just target “women aged 35-54.” Target “mothers in suburban Gwinnett County who are worried about school curriculum” or “small business owners in downtown Augusta anxious about inflation.” How do you find these people? You can use tools to analyze public sentiment in local news comments and community Facebook groups to see what people are actually worried about, like property taxes or bad roads. That insight feeds directly into the ad copy you run on LinkedIn Ads for business professionals or on Snapchat for younger voters. Yes, it’s more work and requires better data analysis and more creative versions, but the improvement in ad relevance and persuasive power is huge. Generic ads are just ignored. Specific, emotional messaging is what gets people to act. You have to understand what keeps them up at night.

The Conventional Wisdom is Wrong: Don’t Abandon Traditional Media Entirely

A lot of digital-first people will tell you to completely ditch traditional media like radio or print because the reach is declining and the ROI is hard to measure. I think that’s a huge strategic mistake for the 2026 midterms. While digital is obviously dominant, abandoning traditional channels means you’re ignoring certain voters in specific places. The big national media consumption numbers are misleading if you don’t look at them with a local lens. For instance, local AM/FM radio is still huge in rural Georgia counties during drive time, and those little community newspapers are still trusted by older, high-turnout voters.

My argument is for a smart, integrated approach. Going all-in on digital will alienate voters who aren’t online all day or who just trust their local radio station for information. Think about a state legislative race in a district that covers both suburbs and rural towns. Your digital ads might work great on younger voters in the developed areas, but what about the older, reliable voters out in the country? A well-placed ad on a local station like WGAU in Athens or an insert in a weekly paper could be the only way to reach them. The point is to strategically put a small slice of the budget (maybe 5-10%) into these channels, targeting the specific people who still use them. This gives you a multi-touchpoint strategy that repeats your message everywhere, meeting voters where they actually are. It’s about getting maximum reach, not just buying into the latest trend.

The 2026 midterms are going to require campaigns to be incredibly adaptable and obsessive about data. To win, political advertisers need to ditch outdated playbooks, fully use their first-party data for psychographic targeting, and build a media plan that integrates new and old channels to get the most impact.