Political advertising has always required speed and agility as campaigns have needed to adjust quickly, but measurement has often lagged behind. Traditionally, campaigns had to wait until after Election Day to understand what worked, which messages moved voters, and where media dollars made the greatest impact.
Now, as political advertisers shift more investment into streaming, and traditional TV becomes more performance driven, expectations are rising. Campaigns need the same kind of in-flight and post-flight insights that other advertisers use to optimize performance, measure outcomes, and understand campaign impact while there is still time to act. Through Comcast Advertising’s partnership with Tunnl, political advertisers are gaining access to more actionable measurement that helps connect media exposure to real audience impact, bringing greater clarity and accountability to one of the fastest-moving categories in advertising.
To explore what this shift means in practice, we sat down with Jeff Teng, SVP of Partnerships at Tunnl, to discuss how our two companies are working together to give political advertisers the timely insights they need to optimize campaigns, measure impact, and make more informed media decisions.
Q. Can you provide an overview of Tunnl?
Jeff Teng: Tunnl helps organizations identify, understand, and connect with the people who matter most to them. We were built to solve a long-standing problem in our industry: research, media planning, activation, and measurement have traditionally lived in separate places. I’ve seen this firsthand, where audiences didn’t always have the impact that I’m now seeing with how Tunnl thinks about this.
We know that this leads to wasted spend on audiences that don’t reflect the research story and measurement that’s disconnected from the campaign itself. Our answer is a closed-loop approach. We use research to understand an audience, turn those insights into addressable audiences that can be activated, measure how attitudes change once a campaign is in flight, and apply those results to the next round of planning. Each step informs the next, so nothing you learn along the way is lost.
That approach comes to life in the Tunnl Platform. This is where our clients can explore the research, evaluate the custom audiences that grow from it, and activate these custom audiences in their campaign. What makes it work is our data. Tunnl uses sophisticated modeling to connect survey research to real people across the U.S. population. This is one of the things I knew would make audiences more durable for our clients. The insights we gather reflect the actual people a campaign can reach, replacing proxy audiences and targeting assumptions with precise, custom segments.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about how Tunnl works in the political and advocacy spaces?
Teng: Tunnl was actually born out of political roots. Our co-founders, Sara Fagen and Brent Seaborn, are data and political campaign veterans. But since our work starts with research, we serve all categories hitting brands, agencies, and advocacy organizations. Political and advocacy work has been a central part of our growth over the years. On the advocacy side, we primarily help trade associations navigate the changing regulatory environment their members operate in. We also do work with nonprofits, reaching donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders. In politics, Tunnl doesn’t work directly with party candidates or committees; we partner with the agencies that plan and buy media across the political landscape, helping them identify persuadable audiences and understand what drives them. In such a divisive time, few categories test speed and precision like politics does.
Q. As outcomes and proof of performance become must-haves for advertisers, what makes measurement and attribution so challenging in political advertising?
Teng: I’m learning first-hand that political campaigns move fast. In an environment that’s constantly changing, campaigns have to be ready to move with it. Compressed timelines, changing public opinion, policy changes, and a 24/7 news cycle all make it important to know what’s landing with a target audience, and when. I didn’t come from the political campaign world, but I’ve seen how traditional measurement often isn’t built for high speed, especially at this pace. By the time results are available, the campaign has already moved forward. A lot of campaigns aren’t making real-time or even close to real-time changes. Persuasion and intent are also much harder to measure than someone simply making a purchase. Opinions change over time, and attributing ads to these shifts takes more than standard campaign reporting. Especially when you consider all the channels being activated. Campaigns need a clear understanding of not just who they should reach, but how to reach them quickly, and then get visibility into what’s working while there’s still time to adjust. Confirming an impression is only part of the picture. Impressions and click rates will always be part of the equation, but the more important question is: did advertising campaigns influence voter and consumer sentiment? That’s what Tunnl is built to answer across political campaigns, brand campaigns, and everything in between.
Q. How is the Comcast Advertising and Tunnl partnership helping political and advocacy campaigns measure impact across the funnel?
Teng: Through this partnership, we’re applying Tunnl’s full closed-loop attribution approach to Comcast Advertising campaigns, from pre-campaign research through post-campaign measurement. Tunnl can already show direct movement on issues that matter to the people who work with us. But with this partnership, we are able to connect Tunnl’s industry-leading audience data with millions of Comcast households. And because we can pull in Comcast’s exposure data from authenticated households it gives us an added dimension as it enables us to see who actually saw the advertising and how these exposures specifically contribute to this movement. When we connect that data to our survey results, we can compare exposed and unexposed audiences and measure how opinions changed between them.
For political and advocacy campaigns – even brands operating during a noisy election season – that means tracking impact at every stage, from awareness to action. It gives campaigns a far clearer view of performance than reach metrics alone. They can see which audiences are responding and which aren’t. That tells them where to spend, which messages are working, and which channels are worth the investment. The result is spend that’s focused on the people most likely to respond.
Q. Can you share an example of how this approach has been applied to a client campaign?
Teng: This cycle, we’re putting this approach to work with Comcast Advertising across a few ballot initiatives. We surveyed voters at the start of the campaign to establish where they stood on each initiative, and we’ll field a follow-up survey near the end of the flight. Matching those responses to Comcast Advertising’s exposure data will show us how opinion shifted among the voters who were reached, giving campaigns a clearer view of whether their advertising is changing minds. In parallel, we’re applying the same approach for a major national food chain, measuring brand favorability, the reasons consumers choose the chain over its competitors, and loyalty program usage.
We’ve seen what this kind of approach can deliver. For a major app-based service facing regulatory pressure in New York, we surveyed residents on both the brand and the policy issues surrounding it, then built custom audiences of the people most open to changing their views. As the campaign ran, we refreshed the research, measured who had moved and who hadn’t, and built new audiences to focus on the people who still needed to be reached. Over the course of the campaign, statewide favorability for the brand rose 10 points, and ad recall within the target audiences was 20% higher than among consumers overall.
Q. With 2026 midterm spending expected to surpass 2024, what opportunities and challenges do you see – and how could better proof of performance shape future ad spend?
Teng: Spending tends to increase with every cycle, so the more important question isn’t how much will be spent, but how we can effectively use the budgets available to reach people with the right messages. More spending doesn’t increase ad inventory. It just means more competition for the same space across channels. As the airwaves get more crowded with similar political messaging, it becomes harder for any single message to break through, and easier for the budget to go towards people who have already seen enough.
We know campaigns will always need to invest to see results. What separates an efficient campaign from an expensive one that doesn’t move the needle is whether that investment reaches the right people in the places they’re actually watching. Sometimes that means persuading voters who are still undecided. Other times, it means mobilizing supporters to show up. Better proof of performance makes it possible to stay flexible. When campaigns can see which audiences moved and which didn’t, they can plan each new flight around real results instead of assumptions. Over time, that changes how budgets get built, with more money going toward the audiences and tactics that have already shown results. That applies to ballot initiatives, issue campaigns, and fundraising efforts alike, and it’s an advantage every advertiser can use.
To see how real-time performance insights can power smarter advertising for your political ad campaign, contact us today.
