Micro-influencers are the authenticity layer in the mix. Celebrities are great for fast, broad attention, but micro-influencers win when brands need “real people” credibility and relevance in specific communities—especially as media shifts toward more personalized, narrowcast distribution.

Yes—expert-led and leader-led content is the closest B2B equivalent of UGC because it delivers the same “human, credible, native-to-the-platform” feel. Think founder/executive POV, practitioner explainers, and customer voices—produced simply, with honesty and specificity.

There will definitely still be key states with higher spend – many of the states we associate with high spend and competitive races will remain on-top of the ranking. Michigan, in particular, is likely in for another extremely expensive year.

When we say that we expect spending to be more “spread out”, what we really mean is that many of those smaller markets that were often overlooked by political advertisers have seen more and more political spending in recent cycles. There are lots of reasons for this: better intelligence on both the buy and sell side, changing political geographies making previously uncompetitive seats competitive, and more aggressive spending strategies in lower level races from outside groups, just to name a few.

They’re related, but not identical. OTT is the streaming delivery method, while CTV is streaming viewed on a connected TV device. In practice, many conversations bundle them together (as the deck does with “CTV/OTT”) because buying and measurement overlap heavily.

Local narrowcast likely means local news becoming multi-endpoint video: streaming, social video, connected TV apps, and more personalized distribution. The opportunity is to package local reporting in more creator-native formats while keeping the trust advantage local news already has.