Holiday media buying is already the most expensive stretch of the year. In a midterm election year, political advertisers are bidding on the same CTV, digital video, and social inventory, and that pushes CPMs up even further.
Here’s the baseline cost, before politics gets added on top.
The brands that protect their efficiency aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones using precision audience data to find the right buyers before competitors bid them up. Speedeon can help you do this using real shopping behavior and life-event data instead of guesswork.
Why Midterm Election Years Make Holiday Advertising Harder
The holiday season has always been the most expensive time of year to buy media. Brands increase budgets, consumers are flooded with promotions, and digital inventory gets tight fast. Add a midterm election cycle on top of that, and you get a perfect storm of demand.
Which channels see the biggest impact from political ad competition?
Political advertisers don’t spread their spend evenly. They concentrate it, and that concentration hits specific channels hard:
- Connected TV (CTV) and OTT: Political campaigns have aggressively shifted spend to streaming, where they can target by geography and voter file data. This is the same inventory brands are fighting for with holiday video campaigns.
- Local broadcast and cable: Competitive House and Senate races drive up local TV costs significantly in key markets. If your holiday campaign has a regional focus, you’ll feel this directly.
- Social media: Issue advocacy groups and campaign committees are major social spenders in election years, adding competition during a period when organic reach is already constrained.
- Online video and programmatic display: Less acute than CTV, but political dollars do spill into these channels, especially in the final weeks before November.
What happens to CPMs when political and holiday budgets collide?
The effect is real and measurable. Programmatic inventory costs already spike 20–40% during the holiday window in a normal year. In a midterm cycle, CTV CPMs in competitive markets can climb further, particularly in battleground states and congressional districts where campaigns are spending aggressively.
Without a precision targeting strategy, this means paying more to reach consumers who may have no interest in their category. With high-quality audience data, it means the competition is wasting money, not you.
The Case for Precision Over Volume
When CPMs spike, the brands that come out ahead aren’t the ones spending more, they’re the ones spending smarter.
Why broad targeting costs more and delivers less in a crowded market
For years, the default holiday media strategy was simple: increase budgets, increase impressions, and capture more buyers through volume. That approach has a ceiling in any year. In an election year, it hits that ceiling faster and at a higher cost.
When CPMs are elevated, every wasted impression carries a larger opportunity cost. Reaching consumers who have no intent to buy in your category isn’t just inefficient. It’s actively expensive. The brands that win crowded media environments are the ones that replace spray-and-pray with something more precise.
What audience signals actually predict holiday purchase intent?
Not all data is equal when it comes to identifying holiday buyers. The signals that matter most go well beyond basic demographics:
- Seasonal shopping behavior: Has this household shopped in this category during previous holiday windows?
- Purchase intent signals: Real transaction data, as opposed to modeled proxies, that indicate active buying behavior.
- Life event triggers: A household that just moved, had a baby, or got married is establishing new brand relationships and often spending more. These are disproportionately valuable holiday audiences.
- Deal-seeking tendencies: Some shoppers wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Others pay full price in October. Knowing which is which changes how and when you reach them.
- Online and offline activity patterns: Where consumers shop and how they prefer to receive offers determines which channels will convert for them specifically.
Combining these signals gives you a picture of which households are ready to buy, not just which demographics match your category’s historical profile.
Holiday Shoppers Are Not One Audience
One of the most common mistakes in holiday targeting is treating ‘holiday shopper’ as a single segment. It isn’t. Purchase behavior varies across shopper types, so does timing, so does which channel actually converts them. Your creative and media mix need to account for that.
Key holiday audience segments to build and activate
- Household composition by kid age, from Crib to Playroom (0–5) through Prime Toy Years (6–10) to Tween/Teen Households (11–17), plus Hanukkah-celebrating households and gifting pet parents
- New Traditions households marking a first: Baby’s First Christmas, First Christmas in a New Home, Christmas Wedding Planning, and First Season of Us
- Holiday credit behavior segments, from upscale retail and specialty apparel cardholders to Buy Now Pay Later users and mid-tier retail card shoppers
- Seasonal buying patterns, including Black Friday & Cyber Monday shoppers, informed and intentional researchers, luxury-to-last-minute buyers, and price-sensitive or one-stop convenience seekers
- Checkout channel behavior across Amazon, omnichannel, social commerce, in-store, and mail order shopping
- Festive home and hosting audiences, from holiday décor and spirits buyers to catered celebration hosts and home-made holiday hosts
- Seasonal gift list segments by category, including tech, apparel, fragrance, beauty, and gift card purchasing behavior
- Ready-to-give audiences for nonprofits, segmented by donation level, cause category, faith-based giving, civic and political giving, and corporate or crowdfunded donors
Building separate audience segments and activating them with tailored creative and timing consistently outperforms a single holiday campaign targeting everyone at once.
Building a Cross-Channel Holiday Strategy That Survives Election Season
A good audience strategy is only as strong as its reach across channels. Here’s how to put it to work.
Activating audiences across CTV, programmatic, and beyond
Speedeon audiences are built to move, not sit in a file waiting to be useful. Activate directly through partners like LiveRamp, Growth Channel, and Cadent for programmatic, CTV, and OTT buys, or upload people-based records into data clean rooms and warehouses like Snowflake for fully custom, in-house activation. The data goes wherever your stack already lives.
And despite the digital-first framing of this post, direct mail remains one of the highest-performing channels in the Speedeon playbook, especially during the holidays. A physical piece in a mailbox cuts through inbox and feed clutter in a way digital alone can’t, and it pairs naturally with the same audience selects used for CTV and programmatic, so messaging stays consistent across every touchpoint a shopper sees.
The point isn’t picking one channel. It’s having one audience strategy that activates everywhere it needs to.
Why timing your audience build matters more in a midterm year
Start earlier than you think you need to. In a normal year, building holiday audiences in October is late. In a midterm year, with political budgets peaking in September and October ahead of the November election, it’s very late.
Brands that build and test their holiday segments in August and September, before political spend peaks and before CPMs spike, enter the holiday window with audiences already validated and media already planned. Brands that wait compete for inventory that’s been driven up by campaigns that had nothing to do with retail.
The window to get ahead of this is open now. It won’t be for long.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does political advertising actually affect holiday CPMs?
Yes, and the effect is most pronounced in specific channels. CTV, OTT, and local broadcast are the most directly impacted because political campaigns concentrate their spend there for geographic and voter targeting. Social media and programmatic display also see increased competition. The degree of impact varies by market: brands with campaigns in competitive Senate and House districts will feel it more than those in non-competitive markets.
When should brands start building holiday audiences in a midterm election year?
Earlier than in a non-election year. Ideally, audience segments are built and tested by August or September, before political budgets peak in the final weeks before the November election. Brands that wait until October to build holiday audiences are competing for inventory that has already been bid up.
Which holiday audience segments perform best during high-competition media environments?
When CPMs go up, predictive segments tend to outperform basic behavioral targeting. That’s because the models look at a mix of factors, like demographics, behavior, and life stage, instead of relying on one signal like past purchases. Purchase history alone can work, but it only covers people who’ve already bought something similar, which usually isn’t enough volume for real optimization. Predictive models solve that by giving you a bigger, more reliable audience to work with right when every impression counts most.
How do I activate Speedeon holiday audiences across my media channels?
Speedeon audiences activate directly through partners like LiveRamp, Growth Channel, and Cadent for programmatic, CTV, and OTT buys. For more custom setups, you can also upload people-based records into data clean rooms and warehouses like Snowflake, so the data activates wherever your stack already lives. And don’t count out direct mail. It’s still one of Speedeon’s highest-performing channels, especially during the holidays, and it uses the same audience selects as your digital and CTV buys, so messaging stays consistent across every touchpoint.
Reach the Right Holiday Audiences Before the Competition Does
Speedeon helps brands identify and activate consumers based on real shopping behaviors, life events, and purchase signals across CTV (Cadent), programmatic (LiveRamp), and performance digital (Growth Channel). The brands moving now, before political spend peaks, are the ones who’ll have audiences built and media planned while everyone else is bidding up inventory in October. Start building your holiday audiences now or connect with our team to discuss strategy!
