Political campaigns are cracking the code on who votes after seeing their ads

With U.S. campaigns projected to pour a record $11.6 billion into this year’s midterm elections — even more than the 2024 presidential cycle — the stakes are high. That’s why political advertisers are finally starting to zero in on who votes after seeing an ad.

Both sides of the aisle are creating more sophisticated identity frameworks to power better targeting. The strategies have already been deployed across a number of statewide races and, based on conversations with political media buyers, could extend into the 2028 U.S. presidential race.

For example, during a 2025 Pennsylvania judicial campaign, Data Trust segmented voters by exposure frequency based on log-level campaign results supplied by The Trade Desk — identifying who had been overtargeted or undertargeted.

Voters exposed to those ads were 31% more likely to request a ballot and 25% more likely to return it, according to Data Trust.

Jon Black, CEO of Data Trust, a data provider for conservative campaigns, called this “the holy grail” of political data. It’s proof that ad dollars drove real voter action. After a successful first experiment, Data Trust now plans to scale it into more statewide campaigns this midterm cycle.

The data also revealed a performance sweet spot: Voters exposed to 5 to 10 ads from the first test had the highest ballot return rate at 38%, outperforming both lower and higher frequencies by nearly 10%. In addition, around 38,000 new voters were reached this way.

Historically, political advertisers have been able to see match rates, but not specifics on who the match is. That’s starting to change, emphasizing outcomes over impressions and clicks. At a time when outcomes are becoming table stakes for advertisers more than a buzzword, political advertising could be the ultimate vertical for outcomes because it’s a zero-sum game: Either the person voted or didn’t — and they either voted for your candidate or didn’t.

Yet, while the space has been shifting into the more digital-focused age, politics still face some headwinds on that front.

“Digital, as a whole, has continued to grow, but the measurement side of it has always been somewhat unresolved,” Black said. “Politics is a very metrics-driven game. It’s limited resource allocation. This actually provides a ton of insight into how you can target your voters.”

CTV is growing, but still lags linear

Data Trust isn’t alone. DSPolitical and FreeWheel are now expanding efforts after seeing major success during the 2024 presidential cycle.

In 2024, Democratic campaigns that activated their first-party voter data through the FreeWheel Identity Network found 18-times higher match performance on incoming connected TV (CTV) bid requests.

AdImpact projects a record $2.7 billion will be spent on streaming ads this midterm season, making it the fastest-growing channel in political advertising. But while CTV is making strides in politics, the channel still trails behind linear TV.  Compared to 2024, CTV growth is flat at 23%, while traditional TV is still projected to account for 60% of total spend.

DSPolitical CEO Mark Jablonowski told The Current that having cutting-edge tools is one thing, but actually shifting budget away from TV is another.

The democratic agency will work on over 2,000 campaigns this cycle, with voter-file targeting baked into every single one.

“It really allows us to have great identity resolution against offline data to target voters on the most influential screen in the house,” Jablonowski said. “Being able to tie those advanced voter models directly into the bidstream and identity layer for the FreeWheel ad server allows us to unlock a huge amount of inventory.”

So yes, political advertising has arguably been the most resistant vertical to change, even as the infrastructure behind it is allowing advertisers to double down on data. But Alex Ibarguen, FreeWheel’s director of platform sales for independent and political agencies, sees a split dynamic forming.

Some agencies are reluctant to integrate their voter data, but there’s also been a major swell of players looking to build their own data solutions to power future campaigns. She believes it’s a miss to not do so.

“There’s inherently going to be hops and time lost against that audience, which is truthfully everything at the end of the day,” Ibarguen told The Current. 

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.