Some experts say targeted ads on streaming services could be crucial in the 2022 US midterms, as others worry the ads evade federal regulation and oversight
Over the last few weeks, tens of thousands of voters in the Detroit area who watch streaming video services were shown different … Tweets: @peterhamby and @jason_kint See also Mediagazer Tweets: Peter Hamby / @peterhamby : Feels like I've been reading about this “new” targeting technique for like 4 election cycles now https://www.nytimes.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Yeah. And the big distinction overlooked here once you get past the risk of microtargeted deceptive political advertising is there is no spreading function to provide velocity and reach like social media plus a lot of it is on a shared screen where counterspeech dampens it. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Detroit-area experiment — tens of thousands of streaming viewers served different political ads — is the latest stop in a migration that began when the big social platforms started closing their targeting tools. Google's limits on microtargeting political ads in 2019 frustrated both parties, and researchers have since lost tracking access on Facebook after it weakened or disabled their research tools.
With Meta's political ads now seen as poor ROI amid a stagnating user base and harder targeting, per Bloomberg's October coverage, connected TV is the remaining channel offering both precision and scale. The catch flagged by observers including Jason Kint: unlike social feeds, streaming ads carry no spreading function for reach — but also no public record or federal oversight.
First-order effects
- 2022 midterm campaigns gain a channel where they can serve different messages to different households — as the Detroit test shows — without the disclosure obligations that attach to broadcast or social-platform political ads.
- Voters and watchdogs lose visibility: there is no shared archive of what was shown, so deceptive or divergent microtargeted spots on streaming services operate outside the oversight regime that covers other political media.
Second-order effects
- Political ad budgets follow the path of least restriction, accelerating the shift away from Meta's platforms already underway and making streaming inventory a pricing battleground ahead of future cycles.
- Regulators and researchers face a coverage gap: the same pattern seen when Facebook cut off academic tracking tools repeats here, since streaming ad delivery leaves no third-party-auditable trail unless platforms voluntarily expose one.
Third-order effects
- If campaign money keeps moving to whichever interface lacks disclosure rules, pressure builds for regulation that follows the ad rather than the platform — extending federal political-ad oversight to connected TV the way it once covered broadcast.
- The longer-term structure is a governance arms race: each tightening on one surface (social feeds) pushes persuasion spend to the next less-regulated one (smart TVs), leaving election integrity dependent on which screen happens to be dominant.
The trend: Political advertising is migrating from regulated social platforms toward targeted streaming TV, with each platform's policy tightening redirecting spend to whatever channel federal oversight has not yet reached.