Key Takeaways
- Maine, Alaska, and Iowa saw campaign spending surge to between $252 and $331 per registered voter.
- Republicans outspent Democrats in battlegrounds but still lost key races in four of five states.
- Despite money moving to CTV and digital, targeting misfires included an Ohio 8-year-old being served attack ads on YouTube.
Where are the most expensive media markets in the U.S.? At least for political campaigns in 2026, they were Maine, Alaska, and Iowa.
These thinly populated battleground states saw spending of up to $331 per registered voter for the 2026 election cycle, according to data from AdImpact and state voter rolls.
That came as total political spending hit a record $11.9 billion across TV, digital, and audio, exceeding the 2024 presidential year’s $11.2 billion. None of that includes substantial direct mail or outdoor campaigns.
Maine saw the highest spending per voter at $331, followed by Alaska at $313 and Iowa at $252. They fell just shy of a record set by Montana in 2024, which got $335 per voter thanks to a competitive Senate seat. Competitive Senate and gubernatorial races fueled a record number of three-digit outlays per voter in 2026, including Ohio ($112) and Kansas ($102).
Spending per voter doubled and even tripled from two years ago in all five triple-digit-spending states. Republicans outspent Democrats in four of those five but lost key races in all of them, per AdImpact, with the Alaska Senate race still being counted.
That so much money failed to change outcomes could force a major rethink of 2028 strategy.
Targeting misfires
Heavy spending meant local ads spilling into national buys. By October, Senate campaign ads from Iowa, Texas, Florida, Maine, and Kansas ran on some national broadcasts of NCAA and NFL football games.
A shift to digital and connected TV spending this year made targeting theoretically easier, but didn’t guarantee reaching the right people.
Sal Tuzzeo, a Fabric Media executive based near Cleveland, said his 8-year-old son was bombarded by political ads, even though he was watching age-appropriate content on the big screen from YouTube creators TerraGreen, The Fish Guys, and Unspeakable.
“The amount of political money flowing into streaming and CTV seemed absurd,” Tuzzeo said. “The mistargeting was egregious.” He attributed it to “a broad reach land grab coupled with overt aversion to frequency capping.”
Over the past few months, nearly every ad in every pod his son watched was political, Tuzzeo said. His child could recite verbatim ads dealing with abortion, sex changes, crack cocaine, and domestic violence.
Too much too late
Republicans outspent Democrats by a $5.5 billion to $5 billion margin nationwide, per AdImpact. But that advantage made little difference. For example, of 87 candidates backed by Elon Musk’s America PAC, 80 lost, according to Travis Trawick, CEO of nonpartisan election tech firm FullPAC.
Too much money went into broadcast over the final five weeks, when time is most expensive and when “at least in this election, most people’s minds were already made up,” Trawick said. “Running the same ad in front of people 60 times just has diminishing returns.”
For 2028, he believes campaigns will shift spending earlier in the cycle and toward AI-driven digital and social strategies, using AI not just to optimize media but also to collect return path signals and shape creative that spawns voter engagement.
“Being able to create a conversation between a voter and a candidate or an issue, not just talking at them, and doing that at scale, is something that’s never really been possible before,” Trawick said. “Now it is.”
