Do not judge a streaming TV test this week. Today is Election Day in the US. For
By Gabriel Caceros · November 4, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Do not judge a streaming TV test this week.
Today is Election Day in the US.
For weeks, political campaigns have been some of the biggest buyers of video and streaming inventory.
That inventory is shared.
Your brand is bidding into the same pool.
So election week typically looks like this on the upper funnel:
→ CPMs up.
→ Delivery behind pace.
→ Less reach for the same budget.
→ Odd frequency in markets with tight races.
None of that says anything about your creative or your audience.
It says someone with a much bigger budget and a hard deadline was in the auction.
Two years ago, a pet brand started its first streaming TV test in the last week of October.
CPMs ran 35% above plan.
Reach came in at about two-thirds of target.
The brand's team wanted to call the test a failure on November 8.
We asked for two more weeks.
Same audiences.
Same creative.
Same budget.
By mid-November, CPMs were back near plan and cost per detail page view was down almost 40% versus election week.
Nothing about the test changed.
The auction did.
Search is a different story.
Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands run on shopper queries inside the store.
That auction is mostly brands bidding against brands.
It is the cleaner read this week.
So this week we split the reporting:
→ Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands: read normally, decide normally.
→ Sponsored Display: read with care, since part of it can run off Amazon.
→ DSP online video and streaming TV: tagged "election week," no kill or scale decisions.
→ No bid increases to chase delivery. Underpacing this week is the market, not a setting.
→ Upper-funnel results compared to the two weeks after the election, not the week before.
The brands that lose money this week are rarely the ones whose video underdelivered.
They are the ones who cut a channel because of seven days nobody could read.
Black Friday planning depends on knowing what video actually does for you.
Do not learn the wrong lesson from the noisiest week of the year.
Election week is a bad week to measure.
It is not a bad week to wait.
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