Last week I wrote about the Cross Screen Media team sitting in our Virginia office after a FIFA World Cup game, watching local news and being shocked by the number of Maryland political ads in every commercial break.
Why was this shocking? None of us actually watch TV that way anymore. Nobody in the room had cable, and almost everyone paid for ad-free or ad-light streaming.
This is why voter contact strategy matters. Campaigns treat voters as a dataset rather than as individuals experiencing advertising one commercial break at a time.
With $11.2B expected to be spent on video advertising during the 2026 cycle, breaking through the noise is almost impossible without a strategy that reaches voters across multiple platforms.
Let's take a look at the voter experience in the San Francisco media market in the weeks leading up to the California gubernatorial primary.
How much was spent?
Roughly $63M was spent in the San Francisco media market across all advertisers, with $9.9M (16%) coming during the final two weeks before the primary.
50% was spent on Broadcast TV.
How do likely primary voters consume TV?
The audience wasn't watching television equally.
Just 19% of households, the heaviest TV viewers, were exposed to 87% of all television advertising.
How many broadcast ads ran?
During the final week of the campaign, gubernatorial candidates purchased 3,712 broadcast television spots in the San Francisco market.
More than half (53%) aired during news programming.
What did the voter actually experience?
The Friday before Election Day produced the heaviest political ad load on KTVU, the Fox affiliate and busiest station in the market.
Nearly one out of every four ads aired that day was for the gubernatorial primary.
During the noon news alone, 47% of the ads viewers saw were for the Gov Primary.
This is what a full day of KTVU looked like.
60% of commercial breaks contained more than one political ad. During the busiest hours, viewers saw as many as 4 political ads in a single break.
Instead of thinking about this in terms of campaign spending or impression delivery, think about the individual voter.
Imagine turning on the noon news before heading to lunch. Nearly half of every commercial you see is about the governor's race.
At that point, the question isn't whether campaigns reached that voter.
It's whether any one message was memorable enough to break through.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses. Campaigns spend too much time trying to match their opponents instead of asking whether they're simply adding to the noise.
Diversify your voter contact strategy. Reinforce your message across multiple channels. Follow up your TV ads with digital, direct mail, text messages, and door knocks so voters remember what they saw.
Know your audience. Understand how your voters actually consume media, then build your budget around their habits instead of industry assumptions.