Political Advertising
Win the precincts that decide. Skip the yard signs.
Every vote you need already has an address. We match your voter file to CTV, YouTube, mail and audio, run it with the disclaimers already on, and report it in a format your treasurer won’t hate. Federal, state, local, PACs, ballot measures.
What a winning program is actually made of.
Persuasion video
30s and 60s cuts that actually move opinion. Built around real polling, focus-group tested when budget allows, and shipped fast enough to answer the news.
- CTV / OTT delivery
- YouTube TrueView + Shorts
- Cross-platform versioning
- Contrast + response cuts
Voter-file targeting
L2, TargetSmart and NGP VAN, matched to addressable CTV, programmatic and mail. Verified IDs and turnout scores drive the buy, not lookalikes.
- Match rates 78–92%
- Universe modeling
- Persuasion · turnout · suppression
- Daily refresh from canvass + polling
Streaming + CTV
Hulu, Disney+, Roku, Samsung, Pluto. Households, not cookies, with frequency caps that respect the viewer and don’t torch the budget by week two.
- Addressable household delivery
- Frequency capping
- Verified placements
- See our Hulu advertising page
Digital + programmatic
Display, native, audio and gaming inventory bought through compliant DSPs, with brand safety and political clearance handled before the bid, not after the complaint.
- The Trade Desk · DV360
- StackAdapt
- Spotify · iHeart · terrestrial radio
- Pre-flight clearance
Direct mail
Persuasion and GOTV mail printed, tagged and dropped to land in the mailbox the same week the CTV spot lands in the living room.
- Variable-data printing
- USPS IMb tracking
- Spanish + bilingual production
- Tied to voter ID + turnout score
Compliance + reporting
FEC, FCC and state rules baked into every buy. Disclaimers, lowest-unit-rate handling and disclosure-ready reports, without the late-night fire drills.
- Disclaimer review
- LUR tracking
- FEC Form 3 ready vendor reports
- Pre-filed reporting
From strategy to ballot box.
Same flow whether it’s a 14-month Senate run or a 9-week ballot push. Only the speed dial changes.
Strategy
Polling, district analysis, opponent research, and a written theory of the case. Before a single dollar is spent.
Universe
Persuasion, turnout and suppression universes scored from the voter file, polling and modeled IDs.
Creative
Persuasion, contrast and GOTV cuts. Tested where budget allows, shipped on a war-room timeline.
Launch
CTV, YouTube, programmatic, mail, audio. Flighted around earned-media moments and ballot deadlines.
Optimize
Daily readouts, weekly tracking. The plan you started with is not the plan you’ll finish with. That’s the point.
Compliance is step zero.
FEC compliance
Stand-by-your-ad disclaimers, in-kind tracking, and coordinated vs. independent expenditure rigor.
FCC + LUR
Lowest-unit-rate windows, equal-time handling, broadcast clearance documentation.
State + local rules
A 50-state matrix for disclaimer, blackout and registration requirements, kept current every cycle.
Platform policies
Meta and Google political ad libraries, YouTube and Reddit clearance, advertiser verification done before launch week.
Disclosure-ready reporting
Itemized vendor reports formatted for FEC Form 3, state filings and PAC disclosures. Your treasurer will notice.
Brand safety
Pre-bid brand safety, political blocklists and fraud filtering across every DSP we buy through.
Recent cycle work.
A representative slice. Names anonymized where the campaign requires, real numbers throughout. Full case studies under NDA on a discovery call.
A +R3 seat that flipped on E-Day.
9-week persuasion + GOTV program across CTV, YouTube and addressable mail in a battleground congressional district.
Six points in the final 21 days.
Persuasion video plus Spanish-language radio moved modeled persuadables in a suburban swing seat, at a lower CPM than the prior cycle’s vendor.
A coalition “yes” that cleared 62%.
Full-stack media, earned-media coordination and a faith-community direct-mail layer for a 12-week ballot initiative push.
$5K beat 500 yard signs.
Geo-targeted Meta program with proper disclosures for a local candidate. Turnout up in the districts that mattered, for less than the sign budget.
Three ways in. Pick your door.
- Strategy + universe build
- Up to 3 creative variants
- Multi-channel placement
- Weekly performance readouts
- Compliance + disclaimer review
- Senior strategist + buyer
- Voter-file integrations
- CTV, digital, mail, audio
- Daily + weekly dashboards
- FEC / FCC compliance support
- E-Day war room
- Flat monthly fee, quoted before we start
- Multi-race coordination
- Coalition reporting
- Cross-state compliance matrix
- Quarterly board readouts
- Exclusive sector hold
Questions candidates actually ask.
If yours isn’t here, send a note. Every campaign inquiry is answered confidentially within one business day.
Are you partisan?
We work with Democratic and Republican campaigns, independents, PACs, c4s and ballot initiatives. We don’t do white-supremacist or anti-democratic work. Otherwise we’re candidate-and-issue agnostic, and we’ll tell you on the first call if there’s a conflict with an existing client.
Will you sign exclusivity within a race?
Yes, standard practice. Once we sign with a campaign we hold the seat: no other candidate, opposing PAC or coordinated entity in the same contest. Conflict checks happen before a contract goes out.
Do you handle FEC and state-level filings?
We don’t replace your compliance counsel, but we deliver disclosure-ready vendor reports formatted for FEC Form 3, state filings and PAC schedules. Most campaigns pair us with their existing treasurer and counsel.
How fast can you launch?
Existing campaign with a voter file in hand: 5–10 business days from signed contract. Cold start (incorporation, voter file, creative): 3–4 weeks. Rapid response can be hours.
What’s the minimum media budget?
About $50k per flight to get meaningful CTV + digital reach in a competitive district. Below that we’ll be honest: direct mail or hyper-local digital is usually the better use of dollars, and we’ll say so.
Do you work with local races too?
Yes, and one of our favorite results is still a local candidate whose $5K digital program beat 500 yard signs on turnout. Small races get the same disclaimers, the same targeting and the same senior attention.
Do you do opposition research or earned media?
Not in-house. We focus on paid media and work alongside your GC, pollster and comms team. We have trusted partners to refer for opp research, polling and press if you don’t have them already.
Disclosure
Creative Shift accepts political advertising business consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. All federal candidate communications carry required “Stand By Your Ad” disclaimers. PAC and independent expenditure communications are run with appropriate firewalls from candidate-coordinated work. We do not coordinate with campaigns when running IE programs. Past performance and figures cited above are illustrative; cycle results vary by district, candidate, and conditions on the ground. Specific case-study details available under NDA on request.
The runway shortens every week.
Bring your race, your budget and your honest read of the district. We’ll come back inside one business day with a one-page plan you can hand to your campaign manager. Confidential, obviously.
Talk to the political team →Send a quick brief.
Tell us the race, the budget and the calendar. We’ll read it within a business day and reply with honest next steps.