Why Your Ads Cost More This Fall, and What to Do About It

If you run ads for your business, you have probably already seen it. Your cost per click crept up in the last two weeks. A radio rep called to say your spots got moved. The streaming buy that ran at one price in July quoted higher for October.

You did not do anything wrong. Your account is not broken. You are standing in the middle of the most expensive election cycle in American history, and the meter started running on September 4.

What actually happened

Two things converged this month.

The first is money. AdImpact projects $11.6 billion in political ad spending for the 2026 cycle, which is more than was spent on the 2024 presidential race and roughly 30 percent above the last midterm. Most of that lands between Labor Day and November 3. The projection splits out to about $5.6 billion on broadcast, $2.6 billion on connected TV, and $1.68 billion on digital, so there is almost no channel where a local business is not standing next to a campaign.

The second is a rule most business owners have never heard of. Federal law says that in the 60 days before a general election, a broadcast station cannot charge a qualified candidate more than it charges its best commercial customer for the same class of time. It is called the lowest unit charge, and for the November 3 election, that window opened on September 4. On that same day, a Supreme Court order reinstated an FCC reading that extends those protected rates past the candidates themselves, to certain joint fundraising committees and to party spending coordinated with a candidate.

Put those together and you get more political money buying more airtime at rates the station is not allowed to raise. This is a good time to own a TV or radio station!

For you, though, the surprise is that your rate usually does not change. What changes is whether your spot runs. Stations have a fixed number of units and a legal ceiling on what they can charge candidates, so they absorb the demand by bumping the commercial buys that are easiest to bump, and the cheapest, most preemptible inventory goes first. Your invoice looks normal and your results do not.

Why your digital costs moved too

The lowest unit charge rule only covers broadcast television and radio. Streaming and digital are not subject to it. That does not mean they are safe, it just means the pressure arrives a different way.

Connected TV is where the political growth is this cycle, and those buys run through the same auctions yours do. When a campaign raises its bid to reach a household in Rapides Parish, your cost to reach that same household goes up. No rule required, just more bidders for the same fixed supply of attention.

The channels that hold up best are the ones that do not run on purchased reach. Search catches people who are already looking for you. Email and text reach a list you already own. Your Google Business Profile and your local search presence keep working whether or not a Senate campaign is on the air. Political budgets barely touch any of that.

What this looks like here

Central Louisiana is not a bystander. The November 3 ballot carries a United States Senate race, congressional races, and some higher profile local contests. Every one of those campaigns buys from the same small pool of local stations, streaming inventory, and Facebook impressions that your business does. A small market has less inventory to go around, which means the squeeze is felt harder here than in Dallas or Shreveport.

A few cycles back, in the middle of a hard-fought statewide race, a client called about his invoice. Same spend as the month before, noticeably fewer impressions. “Why did my impressions drop? You going up on my prices?”

I wish I set the CPM on the ad platforms. I do not. What I did know was that this particular client had been writing checks to one of the candidates.

“Not me. More people buying ads, same amount of space, and the price goes where you would expect. Your guy is putting your campaign contributions to good use. He is bidding against you for the same impressions, and he has more money than you do.”

Long pause on the other end. Then: “Well, he better win, is all I’ve got to say.”

He was not wrong to be annoyed, and there was nothing to fix. That is the whole point. The auction does not know you are a local business with a fixed budget and a fourth quarter to hit.

Five moves to make this week

Stop competing for the inventory campaigns want. Broadcast television and streaming video are the contested ground, and unless you have a number of impressions at a certain price locked in through a long term contract (if you are one of our agency clients with an annual OTT/CTV contract and you are reading this, yes, your price is locked in), your prices will increase pretty quick.

Search, your email list, your text list, and your local search presence are not contested the same way. Shifting weight toward the channels that run on intent rather than purchased reach is the single cleanest way to keep your cost per customer flat this fall.

If you need broadcast or radio, buy non-preemptible and buy it now. The cheap preemptible spot is the one that disappears. Paying up for protected placement costs more per spot and less per spot that actually runs. Waiting until the second week of October means the units worth having are already committed.

Plan on the November window. Election Day is a cliff. Political money stops, inventory opens back up, and rates fall right as holiday shopping is in full swing. The four weeks after November 3 are the best value on the calendar this year. Budget for them on purpose instead of arriving there with nothing left.

Reset what you expect from your numbers. If your cost per click rises 20 percent in October and your business stays level, nothing broke. Comparing October to September and drawing conclusions about your marketing is going to send you chasing a problem you do not have.

Do not go dark. The instinct when prices rise is to pause everything and wait it out. That is the most expensive option available, because you spend six weeks handing your visibility to whoever stayed on the air, and then pay to rebuild it in January.

Why some businesses are not sweating this

Renting attention is fine. It is most of what advertising is, and it works. We buy ads for clients every week and will keep buying them through October at whatever the market charges, because reaching people who do not know you yet is worth paying for.

The trouble is renting when you own nothing else. If every customer you got this month came from a spot you paid for this month, your whole business reprices the moment somebody with more money wants the same space. Pay it or go quiet, those are the options.

Presence is the part that does not reprice. The customer who already knows your name, the review that was there before they searched, the newsletter they actually open, the truck they have seen in their neighborhood for six years. No campaign can outbid you for any of it, because it is not for sale.

So the businesses that are relaxed right now are not the ones with the biggest ad budgets. They are the ones with something built underneath the ads, so a bad eight weeks in the media market is an inconvenience instead of an emergency. And when they do buy this fall, they get more for the money, because an ad for a name people already recognize does not have to work as hard.

If you want a look at where your business stands before the fourth quarter gets away from you, we are happy to walk through it. Call us!

~ Tobias

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