Every two years, someone on a planning call says, “Let’s just wait until after the election.” It sounds like patience. In practice, it usually means paying holiday prices for inventory you could have had for less a week earlier.
Here’s our read on what actually loosens now that the polls have closed, what doesn’t, and what to book before the rest of the market wakes up.
How big the squeeze was
This was the most expensive political cycle on record. AdImpact puts 2025–26 political spending and reservations at $11.21 billion, more than the entire 2024 presidential cycle and about $2.3 billion above the 2022 midterms. In the third quarter alone, roughly half of aired political dollars went to broadcast TV and nearly a quarter went to connected TV.
Commercial advertisers felt it. Digiday reported Texas linear CPMs running 10–15% higher, with some programming up 30–50%. Premium streaming CPMs in some markets climbed from the mid-$30s to around $43. One agency saw YouTube CPMs rise about 20%. Local stations pre-empted regular spots for political buyers, which is their right, and brands got make-goods in weaker dayparts.
None of that was a surprise. Political money buys late, pays what it takes to clear and does not care about efficiency. You don’t outbid it. You plan around it.
What loosens this week
Political money stops on Election Day. The inventory it was holding doesn’t vanish; it comes back on the market. The places that loosen first are the places that were tightest:
- Local broadcast and radio in battleground markets. This is where political buyers concentrated, and where station sales teams now have open avails for the back half of November. Expect real negotiating room, especially on news and live programming that was effectively off-limits in October.
- Programmatic CTV in contested states. Political campaigns bought heavily into geo-targeted streaming. When they leave, supply in those DMAs opens up fast.
- Social and YouTube in the same geographies. Political spend on Google and Meta jumped from about $34 million a week in late July to $149 million in mid-October, according to AdsMom data cited by Digiday. That pressure is gone too.
What doesn’t loosen
Here’s the part the “just wait” crowd misses. Political demand leaves, and holiday demand walks right in behind it.
Many advertisers put as much as half their annual budget into Q4, and a lot of that spend was held back until the election cleared. When it all comes back at once, prices climb again. One industry analysis puts the historical CPM increase between November 11 and December 2 at 16–44%. Adobe expects $47.5 billion in U.S. online sales over Cyber Week alone, Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday on November 30. Every retailer chasing that money wants the same inventory you do.
A few things stay tight regardless of the election:
- Ad-supported streaming services that never took political ads. Advertisers fled there in October, so pricing rose there too. Don’t assume those rates come down.
- Any market with a runoff or recount. Georgia’s general runoff is December 1. Wherever a race isn’t settled, political money stays in that market right through Cyber Week.
- Cyber Week itself. The days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday are expensive every year. The election doesn’t change that.
Our opinion: book the gap, don’t wait for the bottom
The cheap window isn’t November and December. It’s roughly the first week to ten days after the election, before held-back holiday budgets return in force. Agencies that treat “after the election” as a single moment will miss it. Agencies that treat it as a short, specific window will buy better inventory for less.
This is also where having someone who buys both digital and traditional pays off. The best deal this week might be a local TV package, a radio flight, or geo-targeted CTV in a market that was off-limits in October. If your media partner only sees one of those, you’re picking from half the menu.
What to do before Friday
If you run media for clients with holiday budgets, here’s the move this week:
- Pull every market you paused or avoided in October. List the DMAs where you went dark, shifted to national, or accepted make-goods.
- Call those stations and streaming sellers now. Ask for open avails from now through November 25 and negotiate while sales teams still have holes to fill. Lock in rates before November 11, when holiday demand historically starts pushing prices up.
- Front-load awareness, save conversion budget for Cyber Week. Use the cheaper early-November inventory to build reach. Keep your conversion budget for the days that actually convert.
- Flag runoff markets. Treat any market with an unsettled race as still political until it’s decided.
- Check your make-goods. If stations owe you make-goods from October pre-emptions, make sure they run in decent dayparts this month, not in overnight slots in December.
None of this is complicated. It just requires someone to actually do it this week instead of next month. If you want a second set of eyes on your Q4 plan before that window closes, talk to our team.
