Q4 is already one of the most competitive stretches on the media calendar, with brands building toward the biggest shopping weeks of the year. This cycle, record political ad spend is landing directly on top of that same calendar, and the overlap isn’t spread evenly. It’s concentrated into two distinct pressure windows that most Q4 plans weren’t built to absorb.
Two pressure windows inside one Q4
As the first post in this series noted, 48% of digital political budgets land in the final 30 days before Election Day, per Basis Technologies. That’s early October through November 3, the exact stretch most Q4 plans are counting on to build toward the holiday peak.
It doesn’t ease up once voting ends either. Perion’s own Todd Cohen, VP of CTV Sales and Strategy, flagged that post-election CPMs have historically climbed another 16% to 44% between November 11 and December 2, as retail and brand spend that sat out the election period floods back into the market all at once. A plan built to survive the pre-election squeeze still has to absorb a second wave of pressure right as the holiday push begins in earnest.
Why CTV inventory is tightening further
Much of this cycle’s shift toward connected TV (CTV) isn’t new political budget entering the market. Marketers reallocated 36% of linear TV spend to CTV in 2025 rather than adding net new budget, according to the same analysis. That reallocation means CTV inventory is absorbing both political demand and existing linear budgets at the same time, making it more concentrated this quarter than a simple spend total would suggest.
Building flexibility into your plan
A plan that locks in creative and placements once, then leaves them untouched through November and December, is exactly the kind of plan that absorbs both pressure windows at full cost. The brands with room to adjust before October 4, and room to adjust again after November 3, are the ones that come out of this quarter in better shape.
That flexibility doesn’t have to mean pulling back from a channel under pressure. As the second post in this series covered, digital out-of-home (DOOH) has been absorbing political budget growth of its own this cycle, without the same inventory strain building across CTV and broadcast, giving brands a genuine option to rebalance toward rather than simply cut back on spend.
The Q4 election-year readiness briefing outlines the key dates and considerations across both windows, so you can build that flexibility in before the pressure hits rather than after.
This is the third post in a series on election-year media pressure and Q4 planning. Next up: what flexibility actually looks like in practice, and where Perion fits into that picture.
Talk to Perion about building flexibility into your Q4 media plan, or download the Q4 election-year readiness briefing for the complete pressure timeline and channel-by-channel exposure.
