How the 2026 election season may impact your digital ads

Political advertisers, like most advertisers, have increasingly prioritized their dollars in the digital space.

During the U.S. 2024 presidential election, digital ad spending from political campaigns reached $3.9 billion across CTV, Facebook and Google. We expect the 2026 midterm election season to reach similar heights in this high-consequence election year, bucking the trend of typical lower-spend midterm cycles. Forecasts show this will be the most expensive midterm election season yet, with total ad spending reaching roughly $10.8 billion, with a significant amount of that funneling into CTV and other forms of digital video.

With political spending crowding the digital landscape, here are some considerations for your digital marketing and advertising plans this season—whether or not you’re working in the political space.

1. Avoid running ads during peak campaigning weeks, or budget for increased costs.

Across the board this year, advertising costs might be 10-20% more expensive than usual—but the greatest cost increases will be in battleground states during peak campaign season, with 50% of all political ad budgets concentrated in the 30 days leading up to Election Day.

While CTV, cable, radio, and billboards will be the most impacted, paid search and streaming audio will see some heat as well. And because social media platforms like TikTok have banned or significantly restricted political advertising, Meta is crowded as campaigners zero in on Facebook and Instagram for their social media spend.

2. Get creative by leaning into owned channels or experimenting with new channels.

Fortunately, you’ll never have to elbow for space on your email list or your own social media channels. Instead of trying to reach new audiences in the weeks leading up to the election, think about what interesting stories and formats you can use to meaningfully engage the audiences you already have. What new content and ideas can you roll out that will wow the folks already opted in to get your updates?

If you must run ads during election season—maybe you’ve got a big program launching or you’re running a timely social impact campaign—then consider mediums that will be less impacted by political spending, like influencer marketing, podcast advertising, or sponsored content.

And, if you run political ads as part of your organizational strategy, consider the year-round opportunities, beyond peak election season, to lean into platform-native creative and mobilization messaging.

3. Dodge the competition by honing in your audience targeting.

The narrower and more focused you can get your audience targeting parameters, the less you’ll need to worry about competing with political spending. If you haven’t before, this election season is the perfect time to test out audience retargeting and building lookalike audiences: reaching people who are already opted in to or engaging with your communications, and other people who are similar to those folks and most likely to appreciate what you have to share.

4. Plan ahead for any political or social issue ads you need to run in the week leading up to election day.

As part of their election advertising policy, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) will not allow any new political or “social issue” ads to run during the final week before election day or on election day itself. That means that ads built out and running before this week can continue running, but no new ads or edits will be accepted—so if you need to run ads during that seven-day period, you need to plan and publish them ahead of time.

And if you’re planning to run political ads for the first time this year, you’ll need to get a head start on identity verification. While some digital advertising platforms ban political advertising altogether, Meta, YouTube, Google, CTV platforms like Hulu and Roku, and Spotify all allow political and election-related ads, but require you to provide credentials and be verified and approved before doing so. Sometimes, this process can take several weeks, so don’t leave it for the last moment.