I am a media consultant. I make television ads. I make videos. I believe in the power of good advertising.
But I also know how few people are watching traditional television anymore.
That is why I keep pushing back when campaigns default to the same old strategy: raise millions of dollars, put most of it on broadcast television, pile up the GRPs, and assume that if we run enough ads, voters will eventually see them.
The 2026 primaries should be a warning.
In Michigan, Florida and Texas, we have now seen Senate campaigns and their allies spend extraordinary amounts of money on advertising - and lose to candidates with substantially less financial firepower. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens despite being dramatically outspent. In Florida, Angie Nixon raised less than $1 million while Alex Vindman raised more than $16 million - and Nixon won. And in Texas, John Cornyn received roughly $69 million in advertising support before losing the Republican runoff to Ken Paxton.
Money wasn’t necessarily the problem.
Where and how campaigns spent it was.
Look at the latest Nielsen Gauge numbers.
I put flames around the Nielsen numbers so you would notice it - see - I am an Ad Guy…
In June, broadcast television accounted for just 19.8% of total TV viewing. Cable was another 19.5%.
Streaming was 48.5% - nearly half of all television viewing.
And June was actually an unusually good month for broadcast television. The World Cup and NBA Finals drove a 118% increase in broadcast sports viewing compared with May. Despite two enormous live sporting events pushing people back toward traditional television, broadcast still accounted for less than one-fifth of all TV viewing.
Think about that.
Even when broadcast had the World Cup and the NBA Finals, four out of every five minutes of television viewing happened somewhere else.
Yet campaigns are still building media strategies as though broadcast television is the way to reach everybody.
It isn’t.
That doesn’t mean we should stop making ads. It means we need to stop confusing making television commercials with running television campaigns.
The modern campaign should start with the voter, not the medium. Identify the voters we need to persuade. Match them to the platforms where they actually consume information. Reach them through streaming television, programmatic video, social media, creators, digital communities and relational networks—and use broadcast where the audience and economics actually justify it.
Television still has a role. But it should be one tool in the toolbox, not the toolbox itself.
The audience moved.
It is time for campaigns to move with them.
The Nielsen Gauge Report: June Report
A Note from My Lawyer: You need to make it clear that you are not a car thief. Whether you admit to being a media consultant is entirely up to you.
Throw your tv out.
I would be really interested to see you do a deep dive on Florida. It seemed like that race reached new levels of lopsided spending with Nixon doing no TV. Curios if she did non TV ads on youtube or streaming.
There is also the factor that if your message is off, the delivery method can’t help you. And really if your message reinforces negative perceptions of your candidacy, well, you are probably better off if nobody sees it.