YouTube replaced TV—now campaigns need to catch up
The 2026 AI & Election Tech Forecast for Search and Online Video
This post is part of “The AI x Election Tech Forecast,” a limited series unpacking how AI is reshaping the role and responsibility of major tech platforms in the 2026 election cycle. Each edition highlights the shifts happening now before the rest of us catch up. See the whole series here.
Editor’s note: This analysis was developed through collaboration with Claude from Anthropic. My process: I provided a brain dump of my strategic insights and insider knowledge. I then went back and forth with the tool on the structure and framework. Claude asked clarifying questions to fill gaps, then drafted the piece based on my answers. I edited and fact-checked the final output. For more on how I use AI see my ethics and transparency disclosure.
📖 1435 words · ~5 min read
1 big thing: Everyone knows YouTube is big. Do they get what that means? 📺
YouTube has replaced television. This isn’t news—people watch YouTube on their TVs, streaming overtook linear viewing, the Oscars move there in 2029.
The gap: Most political media consultants and campaign strategists haven’t truly wrapped their heads around what this means for how they actually spend money and build strategy.
The proof: Despite digital’s advantages, political advertisers are significantly under-investing compared to commercial advertisers. Commercial advertisers spend 72% of ad budgets on digital. Political ad budgets? Still primarily TV and mail—only 28% to digital.
Why it matters: Trump understood this in 2024. He went on non-political podcasts, did long-form conversations, took risks to build his audience. Where did a lot of those podcasts live? YouTube. He got that YouTube isn’t just another place to run pre-roll ads—it’s a completely different media environment that rewards different content and builds different kinds of relationships with voters.
The 2026 question: Will campaigns shift meaningful budget from linear TV to YouTube, or just layer YouTube on top while keeping traditional TV budgets intact?
2. The history you forgot 📚
Google and YouTube have deep political roots—and controversies—going back two decades.
Early 2000s: Progressive blogger manipulated search results so “miserable failure“ showed President George W. Bush’s White House site first. Happened again with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s name showing a less-than-flattering site.
2006: One year after YouTube launched, Virginia Senator George Allen was caught on tape saying a racial slur. The video went viral, destroying his political career. YouTube became a player.
2008: YouTube partnered with CNN for presidential debates.
2012: Huge presence at both political conventions.
The advantage they’ve had: YouTube avoided the content moderation battles that consumed Meta and X largely because video content was incredibly hard to track and analyze at scale. You can’t scrape video the way you scrape text.
What’s changing: AI-powered transcription tools now make it possible to analyze video content at scale in ways that weren’t feasible even a year ago. YouTube’s relative freedom from scrutiny probably won’t last much longer.
3. Leadership & political positioning 🤝
Sundar Pichai (Google CEO): Attended Trump’s inauguration. Google gave $1 million to the inaugural fund and donated to East Wing renovations (along with other tech companies).
Neal Mohan (YouTube CEO): No significant political backstory.
Corporate spending: Google has a corporate PAC like most companies, but they’re not being as aggressive as Meta ($65M) or Elon ($20M).
Between the lines: Google is playing it safer than Meta or X—maintaining relationships without the overt political spending trying to influence which candidates win.
4. Content rules & the policy reversal ⚖️
YouTube’s misinformation policies: Don’t allow misleading or deceptive content with serious risk of egregious harm—including content interfering with democratic processes, technically manipulated content, and certain misinformation.
The big shift (June 2023): YouTube stopped removing content claiming widespread fraud in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.
Their reasoning: “While removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”
What this was: Both responding to Republican pressure AND an exercise in prioritization. They can’t expend resources relitigating every past election. They needed to focus resources on being forward-looking versus backward-looking.
The Biden admin pressure: In September 2025, Google admitted the Biden administration pressured them to remove COVID-19 content. They vowed to reinstate YouTube accounts permanently banned for political speech. This was both a genuine policy shift and a response to Republican pressure.
What continues: Google’s threat analysis team tracks 270+ targeted or government-backed attacker groups from 50+ countries. They’re still monitoring foreign interference and coordinated campaigns aggressively.
5. Political ads & transparency 💰
YouTube and Google Search still allow political ads with limited targeting:
Geographic location (except radius around a location)
Age, gender
Contextual targeting (placements, topics, keywords)
Not allowed: Audience targeting, remarketing, Customer Match, geographic radius, third-party audiences.
Transparency: Ads appear in Google’s Political Advertising Transparency Report. Verified advertisers must include in-ad disclosure showing who paid for the ad.
AI-generated content: Google was among the first tech companies to require election advertisers to prominently disclose when their ads include realistic synthetic content created or altered by AI tools.
6. The AI tools question 🤖
Can campaigns use Gemini? Yes, for certain administrative and creative tasks. But Google has strict guardrails.
Restricted election queries: Gemini won’t answer many queries about specific elections, candidates, or voting processes. Ask “how to win an election in Virginia” and it’ll direct you to Search for authoritative information. I did ask Gemini what campaigns could and couldn’t do. This is what it told me:
Permitted uses:
Drafting non-political emails, press releases, internal memos
Data analysis and organizing schedules
Translation of campaign materials
Prohibited:
Deepfakes impersonating candidates
Misinformation about where/when/how to vote
Mass harassment or bot-like social media activity
NotebookLM’s potential: If I’m running a campaign, I’d download transcripts of every YouTube video featuring my candidate and my opponent. I’m using NotebookLM to find nuggets for attack ads and shape messaging in ways never before possible. I haven’t seen campaigns doing this yet, but they will.
The transparency challenge: Google must ensure equal access to these tools and avoid looking politically biased.
YouTube isn’t just another platform to add to the media plan. It’s where the entire model of political communication is being rebuilt — and most campaigns still haven’t caught up.
Paid subscribers, keep reading for: how the AI search shift changes political discoverability, the Republican pressure campaigns most people are missing, what sophisticated campaigns are actually doing on YouTube right now, and my forecast.
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