YouTube is not Broadcast and I don’t buy the pitch that political buyers should just move 200 points from Linear to YouTube and call it good.
YouTube is also not Streaming and can’t be bought the same way.
YouTube is a reach driver and should be included in every political media plan, the hard question is how much.
YouTube is a unique platform:
Multiple screen types
User generated content across hundreds of thousands of channels. The definition of long tail
Skippable and non-skippable ad formats
So what are smart strategies that political buyers can leverage to take advantage of YouTube’s scale and limit waste?
Who is in your audience?
YouTube will serve impressions outside your target. It’s a political buyers job to understand their audience before they buy.
Below are two Georgia audiences from our 2026 voter model: GOP Primary Voters and Likely Persuadable Voters. Both are ~900K voters, but demographically very different.
Persuadable voters skew younger and more female. GOP Primary voters skew older.
Thank you, Claude for your quick data vis!
What is YouTube’s starting eCPM?
Let’s assume we’re targeting one of the audiences above.
YouTube CPM: $10 (varies significantly based on campaign set up)
5-second Viewability Rate: 90%
GA 18+ Population: 9M
Audience Size: 900K
YouTube eCPM: $110
The larger your intended target, the lower your eCPM.
What are some strategies political buyers can use?
Age/Gender Targeting
YouTube usage still skews younger.
If your audience skews older, broad buying creates waste.
Political buyers can use YouTube’s age targeting and viewership to their advantage. Let’s look at our Republican Primary Voters.
Example: GOP Primary Voters
82% of the audience is over 50. Wow!
Targeting users under 50 introduces disproportionate waste, as YouTube over-delivers impressions to younger audiences. The 18% of the audience under 50 years old is very reachable on targeted formats where there is less waste.
Target 50+ on YouTube.
eCPM: $110 —> $63
Geo Targeting
YouTube allows us to target down to the zip code. We know that different geographies within a state like Georgia have different political makeups.
Our partner, Battleground Data, has modeled every voter in the country based on their likely 2024 Presidential Vote choice.
If we pull the estimated vote counts for the state 50+ population and remove all zip codes where the Harris vote share over-indexed her statewide margin we remove
267 zip codes
43% of the statewide population.
We retain 577K voters (64%) in our GOP Primary audience. We can heavy up to the other members of the audience on targeted formats.
eCPM: $110 —> $63 —> $46
What does this mean for political buyers?
Understand your target audience relative to YouTube’s strength. Start with your audience and adjust targeting as the composition shifts. YouTube over-indexes to younger audiences. If your voters skew older, broad buying creates waste.
Waterfall budget based on eCPM. YouTube allocation should change in every campaign. Model eCPM based on your target and waterfall budget into the most efficient ways to reach those voters.
Analyze reporting against your audience. YouTube provides demographic data on who you reached and placement data on where ads delivered. Benchmark both against your target to confirm you are reaching the right voters and adjust accordingly.