A Vote For Putting Political Ads On YouTube

In the media world, there is a great debate about whether or not YouTube is TV. The debate is also going on in the political world, where local broadcast remains the channel most relied on by candidates, but an increasing share of dollars is going to streaming.

According to AdImpact, while broadcast had a 48% share of total political advertising spending during the 2024 election cycle, CTV got 21%, or 4.23 billion.

With YouTube grabbing the biggest share of TV viewing at about 12%, Nate Turner, Channel Factory’s recently named head of political and advocacy sales, says YouTube is a must buy for political campaigns.

“If you just look at the numbers as a whole, that’s a platform you can’t really stay away from,” Turner told The Measure.

Actually, one could make several arguments for staying away from YouTube, the first being concerns about the toxic political content that appears on digital and social media platforms. YouTube is also a tricky platform for candidates because you don’t have to be a registered voter to tune in.

Turner says that Channel Factory has systems and data to keep candidates out of trouble and help them reach the voters they want to reach.

Channel Factory’s relationship with YouTube gives it access to not just metadata about content on the platform, but transcripts. That helps it make sure content is appropriate for political campaigns.

“In my experience, working with candidates, PACs, agencies, etc., they see the value in being on YouTube,” Turner said. “The challenge is, it’s very easy to spend a lot of money on YouTube without being able to quantify your reach against a relevant audience.”

That relevant audience starts with geography and extends to finding voters who lean right for conservative candidates, voters who lean left for progressive candidates and swing voters for both.

And advertising on digital platforms like YouTube, rather than local broadcast, is even more valuable in down-ballot races. “When you’re looking at state legislative races, they’ve gotten a lot more digital heavy because of the precision with which you can cut through, minimize waste and have more of your ads reaching the people that are actually going to turn out on Election Day,” Turner said.

Political targeting on YouTube isn’t very easy, Turner said. “We’re a YouTube measurement partner. That allows us to have a lot more access to data about what’s actually happening within the Google ecosystem, specifically YouTube.”

Channel Factory uses that data to predict which audiences will be on which YouTube channels and build campaigns around that.

Also important is making sure the target audience watches the political ad, so it tracks completed views.

“We can actually guarantee a cost per completed view of your video,” Turner said.

Or Channel Factory can manage campaigns based on completion rates. “We really understand, not just how content is categorized, but we also understand how it performs,” he said. If a specific video or channel has a particularly high completion rate, it will aggressively buy those channels.

“It's not just the setup, it's actually optimization and running the campaign to create a measurable impact,” he said.

Turner says that by and large, campaigns tend to use the same 15- and 30-second ads on YouTube that viewers are used to seeing on the local news and Wheel of Fortune. But increasingly he says, candidates are taking advantage of new formats available on YouTube, such as six-second spots and vertical video.

While broadcast tends to skew very old, campaigns can use YouTube if they want to appeal to younger potential voters.

“If you want to get a younger audience, get them out, get them engaged, identify key tentpole moments, and make sure you're creating a content strategy to be around those moments with an appropriate message,” Turner said. “Our focus is like, how do we help you as the advertiser, the candidate, harness those moments and create meaningful ways to be in front of those audiences.”

In the political world, there are a lot of ad agencies that predominantly work with Democrats and others that focus on Republicans. Channel Factory is agnostic.

"We work with everyone,” Turner said. Within the company, there are teams that work with progressives, and others that work with conservatives.

That’s partly designed to make sure campaigns strategies are protected. But also, it helps to have “like-minded people running like-minded advertising. I think that's a really powerful thing.” he said.

Looking at the bottom line, do candidates who advertise on YouTube beat candidates who don’t run ads on YouTube?

“It’s a bit more nuanced than that,” Turner said. But there has been some testing done with neighboring areas. In one, YouTube is employed, in the other it isn’t. “In some of those tests, we are seeing that lift. It’s not just about YouTube. It’s about doing YouTube well. That’s going to be the thing creating those lifts.”

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As the upfront approaches, Samsung Ads is touting the results of a campaign that shows CTV can be used for measurable, revenue-driving acquisition campaigns.

Crumbl, the fast-growing cookie store chain, ran a seven-week campaign aimed at getting consumers to download its app. Samsung’s ads delivered more than 16,000 installs, more than double the campaign’s target.

“Too often, CTV is viewed strictly as an upper-funnel awareness channel,” said Caryn Banchek, managing director, customer success and data insights at Samsung Ads. “As performance marketers increasingly demand measurement and lower-funnel accountability from CTV investments, this campaign points to a broader industry shift toward streaming as a true acquisition channel. By combining machine learning, cross-device intelligence and attribution, we’re proving that CTV is a performance-driven growth engine.”

Samsung said that within seven days, Samsung smart TV households exposed to the Crumbl campaign generated more than $20,000 in attributable revenue. That means Samsung ranked among Crumbl’s strongest acquisition channels.

“The Samsung team exceeded our expectations. The results were surprisingly competitive with our core social platforms,” said Giana Flores, paid media specialist at Crumbl. “Running on the Samsung Home Screen UI gave our brand a premium feel and captured attention in a way that’s hard to replicate on mobile. The campaign started as an awareness test quickly proved it could drive real conversion and revenue.”

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Last week we wrote about Nielsen’s Upfront Planning Guide, which touted the growing importance of ad supported streaming. After that, a story appeared that said that Nielsen was making changes to its Big Data+Panel methodology that would show that traditional broadcast and cable have had a larger share of 25- to 54-year-old viewers. The change was one of four being mandated by the Media Rating Council in order for Nielsen to maintain Big Data+Panel's accreditation.

Nielsen is delaying the release of its February report at the request of some of its customers. The ratings company does not plan to review its planning guide, or its earlier monthly reports.

VAB, which represents traditional programmers and distributors, has been complaining that Nielsen was undercounting their viewership.

“In dozens of presentations to both buy & sell sides, we detailed how BD+P did not cure the Panel-Only undercounting, and how much compounded damage Nielsen's defective currency products have done over the past five years,” said VAB CEO Sean Cunningham.

“MRC's public call for more cures from Nielsen has come at least 10 months too late as all the named defects have been on parade since May of 2025,” he said.

"While we now have five months of Nielsen's re-stated 2025 audience figures showing significantly more audience count, this is no cause for celebration — but instead an acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on 2025/2026 audience supply by Nielsen through their denial, obfuscation and indifference...while somehow retaining MRC accreditation,” Cunningham said.

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Smartly said it has agreed to acquire Incrmntal, an AI-powered incrementality measurement platform. 

“Marketing leaders today are demanding better measurement for performance and accountability,” said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. “Incrementality is becoming increasingly important in a world where traditional approaches are challenged to move at the speed of AI and the changing consumer journey. With Incrmntal, Smartly enables marketers to connect what’s happening in their business outcomes in real time with how they optimize media, creative, and campaigns, so they can see performance as it happens and take immediate action.”