Having Gordon Ramsey reruns on all day while I work doesn’t count, right? RIGHT!?
Anyway… Last week, we took a look at time spent on the TV screen available to political advertisers. This really doesn’t tell the full story.
Imagine you’re a consultant in the 2026 Georgia Senate race. You are looking at two different voters in your target audience of Swing Voters.
Swing Voter A: Age 70, retired. Flips through channels most of the day, landing on local and random movies.
Swing Voter B: Age 45, employed full time, parent. Streams a favorite show during down time and watches the Georgia Bulldogs with friends on Saturdays.
Each vote counts the same and campaigns need to drive their message home with both. Traditional buying strategy would plan to show their ad to everyone in the audience 10 times per week on average (1,000 Targeted Rating Points).
Swing Voter A, would see your candidate’s ad 20+ times each week. Swing Voter B, would see the ad once, if they are paying attention during that time.
Successful campaigns in 2026 will segment audiences by viewership and plan buys accordingly. Running a flat 1,000 points on linear per week is a losing strategy this cycle.
We model viewing hours for every U.S. household, across each screen and then group them into Heavy, Light, and None categories to make the data usable for campaign planning.
Linear TV Isn’t Dead
Broadcast and Cable still command attention from voters and is a key component to most media plans. However, with Streaming and cord-cutters/cord-nevers growing, Linear viewership has become concentrated.
66% of voters actively consume Linear TV, but the tier data shows you have to dig deeper.
Tier | % of US HH | Avg. Weekly Hours | % of Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
Heavy | 25% | 25 | 89% |
Light | 41% | 2 | 11% |
None | 35% | 0 | 0% |
25% of US households see 89% of all ads on linear. That is an extreme concentration. In a future edition, we’ll discuss what the Light Tier is watching and why you should plan your linear schedules around them. Spoiler alert: they watch a lot of sports.
Streaming Has Filled the Gap
While Linear viewership has fallen in recent years, time spent watching the TV screen has not (Impression to Ballots #1). Let’s look at CTV, the portion of streaming (or OTT) that is on the TV screen.
81% of voting households are reachable on ad-supported streaming, up from 67% last cycle.
But, again, our viewership tiers expand this story.
Tier | % of HH | Avg. Weekly Hours | % of Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
Heavy | 30% | 71 | 76% |
Light | 51% | 13 | 24% |
None | 19% | 0 | 0% |
The top 30% of streaming viewers consume 76% of streaming ads.
Wow! The average Heavy and Light CTV voter is watching more hours per week than linear. Couple of key points:
There are fewer ads per hour on CTV than on Linear - 12 vs. 32
CTV is bought like Digital - so buyers can serve ads when people are watching and cap frequency, which makes reaching light viewers easier than linear.
Light Tiers Dominate
26% of American adults sit in the Light Tier of both Linear and CTV. They watch some Linear TV and some CTV.
This is where campaigns win or lose. If you buy Linear or CTV at all, you will reach the Heavy Tiers; they watch a ton of content.
The Light Tier is the battleground. They have fewer chances to see your ads, and they’re also being hit by Coke, Pepsi, Geico, and every consumer brand in America. Attention is scarce.
It is vital that campaigns identify the Light Tier voters and build plans to reach them, while controlling for frequency. The Heavy Tier voters will come along for the ride.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
1,000 Points is not 1,000 Points - Buying 1,000 linear points a week doesn’t have the same effect as in past cycles. Heavy viewers will see the ad at a wastefully high frequency, Light viewers may be under served, and 40%+ of your audience won’t see the ad on linear.
Segment your audience - Segment your plan by viewership. Exclude Heavy TV from Digital, plan point levels based on audience reachability, send more texts and mail to voters who watch none of each.
Measure - Work with vendors that report verified deduplicated reach and frequency across Linear and Digital/CTV. Move budget to channels driving incremental reach and efficient frequencies.
Next week we’ll take a look at voters who are unreachable on the TV screen.
Chauncey