Political advertisers just broke the spending record for a midterm cycle, and plenty of campaign managers still can’t say which ad moved which voter. Sound familiar? Political ad spending’s ROI problem is the same one haunting creator budgets. Money moves faster than proof. Here is what brands can borrow, and what they should refuse to copy.
The record that proves nothing
According to AdImpact figures reported by TheWrap, spending and reservations for the 2025-26 cycle reached $11.21 billion, narrowly passing the $11.20 billion recorded in 2023-24. It also tops the $8.9 billion recorded for the 2022 cycle, per the same report.
Read that again. A midterm now outspends a presidential race.
Volume is the story here, and volume is not evidence. The tally includes future reservations, not only ads that already aired. It is a measure of intent to spend, not of persuasion achieved. Marketers know this trap. We celebrate budget growth in influencer marketing the same way, and we have covered how record spend exposes a proof problem before.
Spend is an input. Treating a bigger budget as a bigger result is the oldest measurement error in advertising, and creator programs are repeating it.
Where the money goes, and why the mix matters
The channel split is instructive. In its third-quarter report, AdImpact data cited by TheWrap shows broadcast television took 51% of the $3 billion in political advertising that aired, versus 23% for connected TV and 15% for digital platforms. Candidates still buy the channel they can count most easily, even as audiences drift elsewhere.
AdImpact’s earlier projection called connected TV the fastest-growing media type, with an expected $2.5 billion in CTV spend. The money follows attention. The measurement follows habit.
That gap is where creator budgets live. Creator content runs across short video, live streams, podcasts and, increasingly, living-room screens. If you want a sense of how rights and reporting get messy once creator content leaves the phone, look at how hauls moving to CTV forces new contract terms.
Three failures political advertisers share with creator teams
1. Reach gets reported as results
Impressions, views and GRPs are easy to pull. Votes, and sales, are not. Both industries default to the number that is available instead of the number that matters. A creator report that leads with views is the campaign equivalent of a poll-free victory lap.
2. Attribution gets claimed by whoever speaks last
A voter sees a TV spot, a mailer, a friend’s post and a canvasser. Which one gets credit? In creator campaigns, a shopper sees a TikTok, searches the brand, clicks a paid search ad and buys. Paid search claims the sale. The creator gets nothing in the dashboard. This is why creator ROI measurement keeps stalling inside finance reviews.
3. Nobody holds out a control group
Political shops rarely run clean tests because the election happens once. Brands have no such excuse. You can run geo splits, staggered creator launches and holdout audiences. Most don’t, because it means pausing spend somewhere, and pausing feels like losing.
What should a brand copy from political measurement?
Not everything in the political playbook is broken. A few habits are worth stealing.
- Pacing discipline. Campaigns track spend against a calendar and a target audience weekly. Creator programs often review results after the flight ends.
- Tracking by market. Political teams know exactly which district got which ads. Brands should map creator posts to regions or segments so lift can be compared.
- Reservation thinking. Locking inventory early cuts cost. The creator equivalent is committing to hybrid deals and securing rates before peak season, as in Q4 rate inflation.
The point isn’t to copy the budget. It’s to copy the operational rigor around it.
A measurement stack that survives a CFO
I’ve sat in budget reviews where a creator program lost funding because the team could only show engagement. Don’t be that team. Build in layers.
- Define one business outcome before briefing. Sales, qualified leads, app installs or branded search lift. Pick one primary and one secondary.
- Give every creator a trackable path. Unique links, codes and landing pages remain unglamorous and essential. Hybrid pay deals only work when the tracking is airtight, because commission depends on it.
- Add an incrementality test. Hold out a comparable market or audience, or stagger launches by region. Compare against the baseline, not against last month.
- Capture the unattributable. Run post-purchase surveys (“how did you hear about us?”) and watch branded search volume. Dark social is real. Ignoring it is a choice.
- Report cost per outcome, not cost per view. Put creators in the same table as paid social and search.
If your team feels the proof gap acutely on UGC specifically, the UGC proof gap piece goes deeper on what to fix first.
Won’t more measurement kill creative?
It’s a fair worry. Over-instrumented campaigns produce stiff content, and audiences notice. The answer is separating the jobs. Let creators own the creative. Let your team own the tracking infrastructure around it, so the creator never has to explain a pixel.
Also be honest about what can’t be measured. Brand-building effects accrue slowly. Say so in the plan, set a longer evaluation window, and use lift studies instead of last-click. A credible “we can’t prove this yet, here’s how we will” beats a polished fiction.
What the cycle’s end should trigger
When Election Day passes, political spenders will count winners and quietly skip the autopsy on wasted spend. Brands get no such cover. Your results show up in the quarterly P&L.
Before your next creator flight, write down the single outcome you’ll be judged on and the holdout you’ll use to prove it. If you can’t, delay the spend, not the test.
FAQs
What is the ROI problem with political ad spending?
Spending keeps setting records, but the link between a specific ad and a changed vote is hard to isolate. Brands face the same gap when they report creator reach without business outcomes.
Why does this matter for influencer marketing?
Both fields buy attention across fragmented channels and struggle with attribution. Political advertising shows what happens when budgets scale faster than measurement. Creator programs are growing the same way, so the same discipline applies.
How should brands measure creator campaign ROI?
Set one business outcome up front, give each creator a trackable path, and run an incrementality test against a holdout. Add post-purchase surveys and branded search monitoring to catch influence that links and codes miss. Report cost per outcome alongside your other paid channels.
What is incrementality testing in creator marketing?
It compares results in an audience or market exposed to creator content with a similar one that wasn’t. The difference is the lift your creators actually caused. It is the cleanest answer to “would those sales have happened anyway?”
Can brand-building creator work be measured?
Partly. Use brand lift studies, branded search trends and survey-based awareness over a longer window than a typical sales flight. Be explicit with stakeholders that these signals are directional, and set expectations before launch.
Do promo codes and affiliate links give the full picture?
No. They capture buyers who use the code or link, and miss people who saw a creator post and bought later through search or direct. Treat them as a floor, and pair them with lift tests and surveys.
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