Same calls, higher price
You did not change your offer, your service area or your creative, and reaching the same homeowner costs more than it did a month ago. In Texas, linear television CPMs have typically been rising 10% to 15% in recent weeks, with some programming commanding price increases as high as 30% to 50%.
Streaming did not stay out of it. One media agency reported average premium CTV and streaming CPMs rising from $34 or $35 to $43, depending on which locations advertisers were trying to target, and another registered a 20% increase in the average YouTube CPM in recent weeks.
Who is bidding against you
Of the $12 billion expected to be spent in the run-up to the November midterm elections, some $8.2 billion is going to TV or CTV. Political clients spent $149 million on YouTube and Meta in the week beginning October 11, up from $34 million in the final week of July.
That money lands by geography, not by industry. Texas, Ohio and Michigan have drawn the highest amounts, with Texas alone taking in $34.5 million between October 1 and October 17, and in Wisconsin there have been a lot of preemptions of spots regional clients had already booked. You are not competing with another contractor for that impression.
Move the money, not the budget
The reflex is to raise the budget until the lead volume comes back, which pays the inflated price twice. The buyers in the report are doing the opposite: advising clients to lean out of specific DMAs or even entire states, shifting toward premium streaming or national inventory when budget permits, and in a minority of cases going dark on linear until the election is over.
Going dark is the one move worth thinking twice about in the fourth quarter, because it is hard to come back from. The useful version is narrower. Pull the money off the surfaces the reporting names as inflated, keep the demand channels this money is not buying, and let the crowded auction be someone else's problem for a few weeks.
What changes in your week
Whoever runs your media sits down this week, lists every place you buy attention, and marks the ones under pressure: local linear, local CTV, YouTube and social in the markets drawing that spend. The budget does not shrink, it moves to where a homeowner who already needs a roof can still find you at your own price.
What you notice is the thing that usually slips in a quarter like this. Cost per booked job is not dragged up by an auction you never entered, because you stopped bidding in it. The demand this money is not buying keeps running, and when the spending ends in November you are not rebuilding from zero, because you never switched it off.