Political Ads Carry Broadcast Habits Into CTV, Risking Billions

Political campaigns will spend more than $11 billion on advertising in the midterms, and a growing share of it will land on connected television (CTV). But according to AdExchanger, shifting the budget to streaming without shifting the thinking behind it can lead to a tremendous amount of waste.

The warning lands at a moment when the money is already moving. CTV is pulling ad dollars that once went to linear TV, and political buyers are following the audience to streaming platforms.

Why does broadcast thinking cost money on streaming?

For years, the industry has debated linear versus streaming. The debate matters for political advertisers because the two channels work differently, and habits built for broadcast don't transfer cleanly.

When campaigns treat CTV like traditional TV, they bring old assumptions with them:

• Buying patterns built for broad linear reach rather than streaming's addressable audiences
• Measurement habits that don't account for how streaming viewership is tracked
• Budget allocation that ignores the technical differences between the two channels

The result, as AdExchanger frames it, is that campaigns can commit billions in spend that doesn't perform the way it would on broadcast. The dollar figure at stake matches the scale of the overall midterm spend — more than $11 billion, with the CTV share still growing.

What should campaigns do differently?

The core issue isn't the channel. It's the approach. Streaming rewards advertisers who adapt their buying, targeting and measurement to how CTV actually works. Campaigns that simply relocate their linear playbooks stand to waste a tremendous amount of that spend, per the report.

That's a steep price for a habit. With midterm budgets already committed and CTV's share still climbing, the campaigns that adjust their thinking — not just their budgets — will be the ones that get full value from streaming.