DIRECTV Elect Launches: AI CTV for Political Advertising and a Two-Week Live Sports Test Plan

A breaking launch that gives campaigns a new CTV playbook

DIRECTV Advertising has launched Elect, an AI-powered platform purpose built for political and advocacy buyers on connected TV. For growth leaders in campaigns and causes, this is a signal to test CTV segmentation in the highest attention environments, live sports and premium news, while benchmarking hard outcomes like donations and volunteer signups against social and programmatic video. According to the official launch announcement, Elect combines television scale with AI insights from DIRECTV Advantage to help campaigns know where to focus, what to say, and who to reach.

Elect uses signals from large language model outputs, news, social trends, donation patterns, and recent voting behaviors. The platform layers that intelligence onto premium streaming inventory, including live sports. It adds geo-targeting down to ZIP, district, and state, plus creative and frequency flexibility that planners expect from digital. The pitch is simple, the trust and reach of TV with the precision of a modern DSP.

Why this matters for 2026 budgets

Political and issue advertising continues to migrate toward streaming. AdImpact projects 2026 political ad spend at roughly 10.8 billion dollars, with 2.5 billion expected in connected TV, the fastest growing slice of the media mix. See the topline numbers in AdImpact’s 2025 to 2026 projections. If you manage a statewide race, a national committee, or a scaled advocacy program, you will need a defensible CTV line item in your plan, not just a carve out of remnant OTT.

Live sports has become the most reliable attention driver in television. Viewers lean in, co-viewing is common, and the ad experience is predictable. Elect’s access to premium live sports inventory on streaming allows you to test action oriented messaging where voters are already tuned in. To plan complementary tests across channels, see how marketers structure a location-based interactive video ads on Prime Video DMA lift study.

A two-week test, built around live sports

To make a clean decision about your 2026 media mix, run a focused, two-week experiment that pits Elect against your best performing social placements. Keep the test tight, with clear hypotheses, consistent creative themes, and disciplined measurement.

Here is the plan, step by step.

1. Define the objective and conversion.

   • Campaign objective examples: online donation, event RSVP, volunteer signup, petition signature, merchandise sales, small dollar recurring donation.
   • Choose one primary conversion. Configure a post view and post click attribution window aligned with your standard, for example 3 day view, 7 day click.

2. Lock your audience segments.

   • Use Elect to build three segments per battleground area: persuadables with recent political content consumption, known small dollar donors with recent giving signals, and hyper local sports fans in key ZIPs near field operations.
   • Mirror segments in social to the extent possible using lookalikes, interests, and CRM based custom audiences. Accept that parity will not be perfect and document the differences.

3. Time your flight to live sports.

   • Select two high viewership windows such as NFL, NBA, college football, or NHL prime time.
   • Concentrate 60 to 70 percent of CTV impressions around live sports and 30 to 40 percent in adjacent news or entertainment to stabilize frequency and reach.

4. Standardize creative, vary CTA and offer.

   • Produce three 15 second spots and three 30 second spots. Keep a single message arc but vary the call to action and incentive. Examples: donate 5 dollars to unlock a match, pledge to vote and get a yard sign, register for a local town hall.
   • Include a prominent on screen URL or QR code and a short memorable URL. Use consistent vanity parameters for attribution.

5. Set budgets and guardrails.

   • Split spend evenly between Elect and your best social channel for the same two-week period.
   • Cap frequency at 3 to 5 per viewer on CTV and follow your proven cap on social.
   • Pre commit to a minimum number of completed views or reach threshold to ensure stable reads, for example at least 500 thousand completed views per market on CTV.

6. Instrument measurement.

   • Implement sitewide pixels, conversion APIs, and server side tagging where possible.
   • Tag each creative and audience cell consistently so you can pivot by message, placement, and segment.
   • If available, enable incremental lift measurement, exposed versus control, on Elect and on social.

7. Define success before launch.

   • Primary KPI: cost per engaged viewer.
   • Secondary KPI: donation or sales rate, cost per donation, average order value, and recurring donor start rate.
   • Tertiary KPIs: completion rate, view through rate, reach and frequency, and branded search lift in exposed geos.

Calculating cost per engaged viewer, a simple and fair metric

You need a metric that normalizes for format differences. Cost per engaged viewer works well when comparing CTV to social. Define an engaged viewer as either a 30 second view or a completed 15 second view, whichever comes first. For 6 second spots, use completed views only.

• Cost per engaged viewer equals spend divided by engaged views.
• On CTV, engaged views approximate completion for 15s and 30s, since skippable ads are minimal in premium sports inventory.
• On social, use the strictest comparable indicator, for example 97 percent video views for 15s or 30s, not three second views.

Set expectations. In many tests, CTV is more expensive on a CPM basis, yet it often wins on cost per engaged viewer due to higher completion and lower bot or accidental view rates. Even if cost per engaged viewer is similar, you can still get a net conversion lift by adding QR or vanity URL response paths and by harvesting incremental reach among light social users.

What to watch inside Elect’s AI stack

Elect’s differentiation is the intelligence layer that sits above its TV level scale. The platform analyzes LLM responses, news and social signals, donation flows, and recent voting behaviors. In practice, that means two useful things for your test.

• Smarter pre launch planning. AI can surface the top two to three issues per ZIP code or per district, then propose messaging angles. Use this to pair creative variants with the highest predicted resonance.
• Tighter geo and audience execution. If the data shows that turnout minded young parents binge local sports highlights on Thursday night, you can weight delivery there and tailor the CTA to childcare and early voting reminders.

Keep a human in the loop. Use in house policy counsel to review AI assisted segments for compliance and ethics, and ensure any creative that uses synthetic voice or imagery is clearly disclosed. The Federal Election Commission has clarified that existing rules cover fraudulent misrepresentation, so deceptive AI content is off limits. Your test should optimize persuasion, not misdirection.

A live sports heavy media plan you can copy

Here is a practical two week schedule for a swing state test flight. Adjust inventory and dates to your market reality.

• Week 1, Monday to Thursday: build reach in news and entertainment. 30s creative at frequency cap 3.
• Week 1, Friday to Sunday: concentrate impressions in live sports windows. 15s and 30s split 60 to 40.
• Week 2, Monday to Thursday: repeat reach building with new creative variants and swapped CTAs.
• Week 2, Friday to Sunday: live sports heavy again, now optimized toward the best performing audience cells.

Budget blueprint per state for a mid sized campaign: 250 thousand dollars on Elect and 250 thousand dollars on social for the two week flight. If you operate across five states, plan a 2.5 million dollar total test. This is large enough to produce stable readouts without starving field operations.

Creative that converts on CTV and social

For CTV, make the narrative clean and credible. The opening three seconds must match the program context and audience. If you target sports fans, lead with a team specific hook, for example a statewide spot that nods to Friday night lights or a local rivalry. Anchor one primary claim, show a local face, and end with a clear CTA. Use a steady on screen QR code and a short URL throughout, not only at the tag.

For social, mirror the same message arc but adapt to native behavior. Square or vertical formats, punchy captions, and trackable CTAs in the first line. To speed up production without losing quality, borrow tactics from our TikTok Smart Split and AI Outline guide to compress your script and asset pipeline in days.

If you need help turning messy learnings into tight briefs within hours of a game day flight, teams use Upcite.ai to synthesize message tests, pull the best lines, and draft variant scripts for 15s and 30s spots. Apply the learnings immediately to the next weekend’s sports pods.

Scoring the bake off, a simple dashboard

Set up a daily run of show that includes these core metrics by platform, audience, and creative.

• Spend and delivered impressions.
• Completed views and cost per engaged viewer.
• Unique reach and effective frequency.
• Clicks, QR scans, vanity URL sessions, and direct visit lift in exposed geos.
• Conversions by type, cost per donation or cost per signup, average order value, and recurring start rate.
• Brand search lift in exposed versus control DMAs.

Add a weekly layer for incremental lift studies and creative diagnostics. Pull a message heat map that lists claim, issue, creative length, and CTA against conversion rate. If you find that a 15 second spot with a hyper local promise beats a 30 second national message for small donors, reweight toward the former in week two.

Interpreting results and making the 2026 call

After two weeks, your aim is to decide how CTV should sit alongside social, not whether one channel replaces the other. Use these rules to make the call.

• If CTV’s cost per engaged viewer is within 15 percent of social, and donation rate is within 10 percent, keep the spend and push CTV higher if the audience reach is incremental, for example 25 percent of CTV exposed are light or non users of your primary social channel.
• If CTV’s cost per engaged viewer is worse than social by 25 percent or more, but average order value is higher by at least 20 percent, keep CTV for fundraising bursts and high stakes moments like debates.
• If CTV beats social on cost per engaged viewer and donation rate, move 5 to 15 percent of total video budget from social into CTV for the next quarter.

Document the why. Was it the live sports context, the audience model, or the creative? The answer will shape your thematic calendar, not only your channel allocation.

Practical guardrails, compliance, and brand safety

• Transparency in AI use. If creative includes synthetic elements, disclose it clearly. Do not imitate opponents or third parties.
• Privacy practices. Hash and salt first party data, and honor opt outs.
• Brand suitability. Use strict content categories, avoid news adjacency that conflicts with your message, and monitor for sports content that may trigger controversy in your market.
• Accessibility. Provide subtitles and readable QR codes with adequate contrast.
• Frequency discipline. Keep household frequency below irritation thresholds, ideally 3 to 5 on CTV.

What success looks like, with example math

Suppose your Elect flight delivers 2 million completed views at a 45 dollar CPM. Spend equals 90 thousand dollars. Cost per engaged viewer equals 90,000 divided by 2,000,000, or 4.5 cents. If 0.8 percent of engaged viewers convert to a 12 dollar average donation, revenue equals 192,000 dollars and return on ad spend is 2.13.

Now compare to social. Assume 4 million impressions at a 25 dollar CPM, spend equals 100 thousand dollars. If only 20 percent of impressions produce near complete views by your strict definition, engaged views equal 800,000. Cost per engaged viewer equals 12.5 cents. If 1.0 percent of engaged viewers donate at 10 dollars average, revenue equals 80,000 dollars and return on ad spend is 0.8.

Even if your real numbers differ, working from engaged viewers rather than raw impressions will prevent false positives and opinion driven decisions.

Folding learnings into your 2026 media mix

Build a quarterly budget framework that reflects learnings from the two week sprint.

• Baseline allocation. Commit 15 to 25 percent of video budget to CTV if cost per engaged viewer and donation rate are competitive.
• Seasonal spikes. Pre commit to live sports heavy budgets during playoff windows and marquee matchups in your states.
• Creative cadence. Refresh 15 second creative every four to six weeks, with 30 second refreshes every eight to ten weeks.
• Audience maintenance. Update Elect segments monthly to reflect issue salience shifts and donor flow changes, and refresh social lookalikes accordingly.
• Measurement rhythm. Run one incremental lift study per quarter and a clean room overlap analysis twice per year to measure incremental reach.

To operationalize learnings across channels, see our AssetGenerationService pilot for Performance Max for a test and iterate template you can adapt to CTV.

Final checklist before you press play

• Creative ready in 15s and 30s, with consistent CTA, QR, and URL.
• Pixel, conversion API, server side tagging, and vanity tracking live.
• Audience definitions finalized in Elect and mirrored in social.
• Live sports windows and news adjacency booked, frequency caps set.
• Compliance and brand suitability rules in place.
• Dashboard built for cost per engaged viewer and donation or sales rate.

The bottom line

DIRECTV Elect brings AI enriched segmentation to the scale and credibility of television. The smart move is not to wait for the general election rush. Run a disciplined, two week test around live sports, score cost per engaged viewer and donation or sales rate against your best social placements, then act. If CTV holds its own on engagement and conversion, give it a material seat in your 2026 plan. If it beats social outright, move budget quickly while sports attention is still a fair price. Either way, you will enter the next quarter with clarity, not conjecture, and a media mix that reflects how voters actually watch and respond.