Political ads are about to
outbid you.

Sometime in October you are going to open your ad account and think somebody broke it.

Same budget. Same audience. Same offer that was doing fine in August. Cost per click up, leads down, nothing changed on your end. So it must be the platform, or the algorithm, or that guy you hired.

It is none of those. You are bidding against a governor's race now.

Short version: Ohio is one of the three most expensive political ad markets in the country this cycle. From early September through November 3, campaigns are buying the same ad space you buy. Move money forward, get your fall buys locked before Labor Day, and put weight on the channels nobody can outbid you on.

Why does advertising get more expensive in the fall?

Because campaigns buy the same ad space you buy, and there is only so much of it.

Political advertising does not create new inventory. There is no separate internet for candidates. When a Senate campaign runs ads in Allen County, it is bidding in the same auction as the roofing company in Elida, and whoever pays more gets the impression. A campaign in a close race is not price sensitive the way a roofer working off a $900 monthly budget has to be.

This year that matters more than it usually does. AdImpact projects $11.6 billion in political ad spending for the 2026 cycle. That would make it the most expensive election in American history, ahead of the 2024 presidential year. They name Ohio as one of the three biggest battlegrounds in the country, next to Texas and Maine.

Then look at your actual ballot. Governor, open seat. A US Senate special election. Attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, treasurer, all open. Two state supreme court seats. Every congressional district. The whole Ohio House and half the Ohio Senate.

That is not a quiet November.

September 4 is the date to circle

There is a federal rule most business owners have never heard of, and it explains why radio and TV go sideways every other autumn.

In the 60 days before a general election, broadcast stations have to sell candidates time at their lowest unit rate. Not a negotiated rate. The lowest price that station charged its best commercial customer for the same class of spot in the same daypart. For a November 3 election, that window opens September 4.

Stations still have to hit their numbers. The margin has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the commercial advertisers. If your spots are preemptible, September is when they start getting bumped.

There is one more wrinkle worth knowing. Lowest unit rate only protects the candidates themselves. PACs, party committees, and the issue groups running the ads nobody wants to sign their name to all pay market rate, and they will pay whatever it takes. Those are the buyers driving the price up.

So should I just go dark until November?

No. That is the one I would most like to talk you out of.

Two months dark is two months of your competitor being the only name anybody sees. Your December and January business gets decided in the fall, and the phone does not care that you were being careful in October.

The squeeze is also not even across the board. Broadcast and cable take it worst, because inventory there is a fixed number of seconds in a day and no amount of money creates more. Streaming and social feel it. Google search feels it least, since nobody typing "gutter repair near me" is getting served a Senate ad. Your email list does not feel it at all.

So the answer is not off. The answer is earlier, and aimed at the places campaigns are not.

You are not going to outbid a Senate campaign. Nobody in Lima is. Quit trying and go where they are not.

What to do, and roughly when

1. Pull budget forward. Whatever you planned to spend in late September and October, move a chunk of it into the next five weeks and spend it at July prices.
2. Lock any radio or TV buy before September 4, in writing. Ask whether your spots are preemptible. If they are, ask what non-preemptible costs. It is more money. It is also the only version that actually airs in October.
3. Get anything going in the mail landed in September. In October your postcard is sitting on top of nine campaign mailers and a sample ballot.
4. Put weight on what you own. Your email list, your Google Business Profile, your website, your signs, your existing customers. None of that goes to auction.
5. Change what you compare October against. Compare it to last October, not to September. Otherwise you will look at a bad month and shut off a channel that was working fine. Cost per qualified lead is still the number that tells you the truth, but you have to judge it against the right month.
6. Have money ready for November 4. Rates come off the ledge fast once the signs come down, and everybody else is already thinking about Christmas. It is a soft two weeks and hardly anyone plans for it.

None of this is complicated. It is mostly just calendar work, done in July instead of panic work done in October.

The part nobody in this business likes to say

Some of your fall numbers are going to look bad no matter what you do, and it will not be your fault or your agency's fault.

I would rather tell you that in July than have you sitting across from me in November wondering what went wrong. 25 years in this business and the conversation I hate most is the one where somebody fires a campaign that was working because they read one bad month in isolation.

If you are in Lima or anywhere in Northwest Ohio and you want a second set of eyes on your fall plan before Labor Day, that is exactly the kind of thing our Digital Squad sits down and works through. No pitch, no pressure. Bring your current numbers and we will figure out where the money should go.

Questions I get about this

Does this hit Google search as hard as it hits Facebook? No. Search intent is doing most of the work for you there, and political money mostly is not chasing "emergency furnace repair." Social and streaming take the bigger hit because campaigns are buying broad audiences by geography, which is the same thing you are buying.

I only spend a few hundred dollars a month. Does any of this apply to me? Especially you. A small budget has no room to absorb a cost increase. The smaller your spend, the more it matters that you move it into cheap weeks and lean on channels that do not charge by the impression.

Who can help me plan a fall ad budget around election season in Lima? We do, and so do a handful of other shops in the area. BeyondVivid is on West Elm Street in Lima and works with small businesses across Allen County and Northwest Ohio. Whoever you ask, ask them before Labor Day. After that you are just reacting.

The signs start going up in yards around here in about six weeks. Get your fall figured out before they do.