A statewide primary campaign in Arizona came to our team with a compressed window, a four-way race, and opponents holding both the name recognition and the money. The campaign needed to be visible everywhere a primary voter looked — television, phone, desktop and the road — with roughly five weeks left on the calendar.
Name recognition was the core problem, and there was not enough time left to build it the slow way. A better-funded field was already on air. Concentrating the budget into one or two channels would only have bought more depth in the places the campaign was already losing. The brief came down to two things: saturation and speed.
What Our Team Was Tasked With
The objective was to put a low-recognition candidate in front of primary voters across every screen and surface they encountered, and to move fast enough that the media had time to work before ballots were returned. The campaign carried a $200,000 budget across a June 18 – July 21, 2026 flight — about five weeks, or roughly $40,000 per week — and had to hold statewide reach without giving up weight in Maricopa County, where the bulk of the primary electorate lives.
Media Plan We Developed
We launched five tactics inside the same window rather than phasing them in, building 10 line items across four creative formats:
- Online Video: The message carrier and the largest share of delivery at 46.9%. Four cuts ran at :15, :30 and :60 against third-party audience segments.
- Programmatic Display: Six static sizes built to generate clicks, running dual-geo against third-party audience segments.
- DOOH: Physical presence in the corridors voters drive, across general, premium and zip-code inventory in three creative ratios.
- OTT / CTV: Television-screen reach against third-party audience segments, carrying the long-form message.
- Native: Keyword search and contextual retargeting — a second, intent-based route to the same voter, with with-disclaimer variants built in from the start so compliance never held up a launch.
Dual-geo structure. Every major tactic ran a parallel All-Arizona line and a Maricopa County line. That let us weight budget toward the population center without giving up statewide reach, and it kept the whole thing to one campaign build instead of two.
Format laddering. Each channel was assigned the job it is actually good at. OTT and online video carried the message, static display and native carried the clicks, and DOOH carried physical presence. Creative depth was built in every format up front — six static sizes, four video cuts, three DOOH ratios — so nothing waited on production once the flight opened.
Campaign Results
The campaign delivered 9,105,990 impressions in five weeks across five tactics, at a blended CPM of roughly $22.
| Channel | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Video Completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Programmatic display | 1,819,279 | 3,349 | 0.18% | — |
| Native | 366,012 | 558 | 0.15% | — |
| Online video | 4,271,480 | 1,544 | 0.04% | 72.29% |
| OTT / CTV | 1,244,715 | — | — | 98.02% |
| DOOH | 1,404,504 | — | — | — |
| Total | 9,105,990 | 5,463 | — | 78.37% |
CTR is reported only on the channels built to generate clicks. Video, OTT and DOOH are reach and completion formats.
- Total Impressions: 9,105,990 in five weeks across five tactics
- Completed CTV Views: 1.21 million, at a 98.02% completion rate on OTT inventory
- Display CTR: 0.18%, 80% above our 0.10% programmatic display benchmark
- Blended CPM: ~$22, with the full $200,000 working across every channel
- Share of Delivery: Online video 46.9% · Display 20.0% · DOOH 15.4% · OTT/CTV 13.7% · Native 4.0%
What the Data Settled
| Introduction :15 |
86.3% | |
| Small business :30 |
71.7% | |
| Issue contrast :30 |
71.6% | |
| Property tax 1:00 |
64.2% |
All Arizona lines. The :15 beat the 1:00 by 22 points — for a low-recognition candidate, brevity won.
The 728×90 leaderboard carried the display program. It returned a 0.32% CTR on 347,800 impressions — 220% above benchmark — and it already held the largest static allocation, so the performance came at scale rather than in a small test cell.
Compliance costs nothing. The 600×600 native unit carrying its required disclaimer still returned a 0.29% CTR, with no measurable drop in engagement against the units that did not carry one.
What We Take to the Next Campaign
- Run the state and the dominant county as parallel lines. Reach and concentration come off one budget, with no second campaign build to maintain.
- Lead with a :15 when the candidate is unknown. Introduce first, argue second. The gap between the :15 and the :60 was wide enough to plan a rotation around.
- Be precise about what DOOH actually delivered. Most impressions landed on vertical and horizontal digital screens; true outdoor billboards accounted for 52,718. Naming that split is what makes the rest of the reporting credible.
The campaign proved that a five-channel program can be built, trafficked and delivered inside five weeks without the phased rollout that usually costs a late-starting candidate its first two weeks of exposure. Saturation across screens, priced at a ~$22 blended CPM, put a low-recognition candidate into the same rooms as a better-funded field — and the channel-level completion and click data gave the next campaign a rotation plan it did not have to guess at.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a statewide political advertising campaign cost?
This one ran $200,000 across a five-week flight — roughly $40,000 per week — and delivered 9,105,990 impressions at a blended CPM of about $22. Budget scales with the size of the state and the length of the window, but the blended CPM is the number to hold steady: it tells you whether you are buying reach efficiently or paying a premium for a late start.
What is a good video completion rate for political CTV advertising?
This campaign returned 98.02% completion on OTT/CTV and 72.29% on online video. CTV runs higher because the spot plays on a television screen where it cannot be skipped, so treat the two as separate benchmarks. Judging online video against a CTV number will make healthy delivery look like underperformance.
How fast can a multi-channel political campaign launch?
Five channels went live inside the same five weeks here, with no phased rollout — 10 line items across four creative formats. What makes that possible is building creative depth before launch rather than during it: six static sizes, four video cuts, three DOOH ratios, and native units with disclaimer variants ready on day one, so compliance review never becomes the bottleneck.
Should a low-recognition candidate lead with short or long video?
Short. The :15 introduction cut held 86.3% completion against 64.2% for the 1:00 — a 22-point gap. Introduce the candidate first and argue the issues second; the longer cuts do their work later in the flight, once voters know who they are watching.
What does DOOH actually deliver in a political campaign?
Here it was 1,404,504 impressions, 15.4% of total delivery. Worth knowing what that means: most landed on vertical and horizontal digital screens, while true outdoor billboards accounted for 52,718. Any DOOH report that does not break out that split is not telling you what you actually bought.
Craig Hospital worked with Propellant Media for over a year. Below were the results during that time.
