DirecTV Stakes Claim to Share of Political Advertising Gold Mine

With a big mid-term election coming, bringing billions in political ad spending, DirecTV is stepping up its campaign to capture those political ad dollars. 

AdImpact forecasts that $10.88 billion will be spent on political advertising in 2026, that’s up 21% from the last round of mid-terms elections four years ago. 

The big gainer is expected to be connected TV, which is expected to see $2.48 billion in political spending in 202, which is up from the $2.34 billion spent on CTV during the presidential election cycle of 2024 and $1.09 billion in 2022.

With the bulk of the economy stagnant at the present time, media companies of all stripes are targeting election year ad spending, by bolstering their political ad sales teams and devising better mousetraps for capturing persuadable voters.

DirecTV said it is launching DirecTV Elect, which it says is an AI-powered digital platform designed to help political advertisers reach connected TV audiences.

The new platform takes data that provides insights into voter sentiment and campaign issues to create CTV media strategies. That data uses large language models to gather insights from  news, social media, donation patterns and recent voting behavior. The platform is designed to help candidates and issue-oriented campaigns determine  where to focus their ad dollars, which audience segments to target and what to say to each of those audiences. 

DirecTV will be able to send those messages to more than 130 million viewers in inventory across DirecTV and national cable networks. And it can slice and dice those audiences, with geo-targeting at the state, district and ZIP code level.

“AI is redefining how political campaigns discover and engage with voters, helping unlock deeper insights and more effective connections,” said Amy Leifer, chief advertising sales officer at DirecTV Advertising. “When that intelligence is complemented by the reach and credibility of television, voters gain greater clarity and confidence in what they see,  while campaigns can achieve stronger results. DirecTV Elect brings these strengths together — combining the trust of television, the precision and flexibility of digital, and the intelligence of DirecTV Advantage, all fueled by AI.”

As a distributor with a large national footprint, DirecTV has been among the pioneers in addressable advertising, working with satellite rival Dish with D2 Media Sales, which focused on political advertising.

At a time when traditional media is scoring low for trust with viewers–and campaigns are spending a bigger share of their budgets on digital media–DirecTV points to a survey that shows that 61% of U.S. adults trust political ads on TV, more than 50% more than said they believe in political advertising on social media. Viewers said they pay more attention to political ads on TV than other media and fine political ads on TV and streaming the most persuasive.

“Campaigns need to meet voters wherever they are, across linear, streaming, and digital environments,” said Drew Groner, senior VP, head of sales and marketing for DirecTV Advertising. 

“Political ad buyers want to find new ways to reach undecided voters, voters in the battleground states and those in states with the highest projected spend. What is particularly interesting this year is that they’re looking to use live sports programming to break through to those audiences. DirecTV Elect can now give campaigns access to premium live sports inventory on streaming at scale, along with the insights to help them deliver their message where and when it needs to be heard,” Groner said.

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Paramount Global said it  expects a new partnership with giant ad agency holding companies Publicis and IPG to reduce what it pays when it buys media and help it boost its own ad revenue..

For the frist time since being acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media, Paramount reported earnings. In the three months ended September 30, 2025, the company’s advertising revenues were down 11% to $1.28 billion on a pro-forma basis. 

Ad revenue at Paramount’s TV segment–CBS and cable networks–ad revenue was down 12% to $980 million, and direct to consumer ad revenues were down 6% to $300 million. The company has three streaming services, Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+.

On its earning call with investors, the Paramount executives said they expect the deal with Publicis and IPG to help grow ad revenues.

Originally, the new owners of Paramount were looking to do a better job of buying advertising for its streaming services and studios.

“The cost by which we were buying marketing were much in excess of what I have seen in my previous employers and we've seen in the market,” said Jeff Shell, president of Paramount Global.

“Once we got into the process, we realized that the opportunity was significantly bigger than that,” Shell said.

Working with Publicis and IPG, which he described as the two largest media buyers, “we’re going to get significant savings in the cost of buying marketing across the company,” he said.

At the same time, Publicis and IPG represent many of Paramount’s biggest ad clients. 

As part of the deal with the agencies Paramount got "significant" revenue commitments over three years, Shell said. “We expect to see most of this advertising in the digital area where we need it the most, and that you should see that in our numbers over the next couple of years,” he said. 

The partnership with Publicis and IPG will also benefit Paramount as it transitions from linear to digital and in designing its ad tech.

“Our goal is to become the most technologically capable media company,” CEO David Ellison said on the call.

The company’s three streaming businesses, Paramount+, Pluto and BET+, operate on three independent tech stacks currently. 

“There's no connectivity, obviously, between those businesses currently,” Ellison said, adding that “convergence is currently underway to basically unite them into one unified platform, which should be done around the middle of next year.”

Ellison said that when you improve products, you increase engagement. your recommendation engine improves dramatically and. ad sales monetization will improve as you improve the ad tech.

On the call, Paramount did not address its efforts to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. But asked about the company’s M&A strategy, Ellison said that “there’s no must-have for us.” He asserted that the company has the ability to build what it needs to achieve its goals, as opposed to buying them.

Ellison added, however, “we're fortunate that we have the balance sheet to be able to be opportunistic when we think that M&A will accelerate our goals.”