The buyer who can plan in TRPs and eCPM and who can recommend budget changes based on measured reach, not ego or profit, should control streaming.
Campaigns will spend $2.9B on streaming in 2026; get this wrong and risk losing.
What types of agencies buy political video ads?
There are typically two types of video ad buyers in politics:
Linear-First Agencies
Built around traditional TV buying
Strong in TRPs, markets, and broadcast strategy
Often less equipped for audience-level targeting and streaming optimization
Digital-First Agencies
Emerged post-2010 with the rise of digital advertising
Strong in targeting, data, and optimization
Often lacks depth in linear TV mechanics, markets, and reach planning
Even agencies that do both got their start on one side and expanded.
Where does streaming fit in?
When digital accounted for a small portion of campaign budgets, this split worked for most campaigns. Digital agencies wanted growth, but each mostly stayed in its lane.
Streaming upended this model.
Streaming sits at the intersection of linear and digital. It’s bought like digital, but delivered on the TV screen.
Do voters know the difference between Linear and Streaming?
No. Most voters move between Linear TV and Streaming.
61% of Persuadable voters consume both formats. They don’t think in terms of channels; they think in terms of content.
To make it even murkier, many linear TV ads are passed through to streaming, especially during live programming. From the viewer’s perspective, there is no visible distinction. More on this later.
So who should buy streaming ads?
This question has real business implications. $2.9B are up for grabs.
Digital-first agencies want to own streaming as viewership shifts. Linear-first agencies know they must adapt to protect relevance and budget share.
The answer: whoever can plan and measure across screens, in both languages.
That means being well-versed in both TRPs and eCPM, while also being able to provide campaigns with a unified reach metric.
A few years ago, we started showing campaigns a simple framework:
Who should own your streaming? Score each agency:
Can they build reach curves across linear + streaming?
Can they use eCPM AND TRPs to compare inventory?
Do they understand media market waste?
Can they control frequency at the household level across screens?
Do they report cross-screen deduplicated reach in every report?
Highest score wins. If tied, unified planning beats split execution.
So far, TV-first agencies have won this battle. They’ve gotten up to speed on digital, while most digital-first agencies haven’t learned linear.
Case Study: 2024 Statewide
We saw this battle play out in a 2024 statewide election. Buyers had to change their preconceived notions and allocate budget based on expected reach data and efficiency.
Here are the results:
Flight: 1 Month
Audience Size: 198K
Total Reach: 91%
Average Frequency: 46
Reach By Medium:
Reach by Network:
Over the course of the month, the two buyers optimized budgets for the mediums and networks driving the most reach (teal line) and incremental reach (blue line).
The result was that 91% of targeted voters saw our ads.
What does this mean for political buyers?
Audit your agencies - Ask both sides to present a unified reach plan. Whoever can't translate between TRPs and eCPM shouldn't own streaming.
Demand cross-screen measurement - If your agencies can't report deduplicated reach, you're flying blind on the largest portion of your campaign budget.
Move Budget - Use measurement to move budget to the best performing medium, egos aside.
This is the start of a series on Streaming. Let us know if there’s a streaming-related topic you’d like to hear about.
Chauncey