How to Win Political Voter Reach with a Multi-OEM CTV Strategy

As campaigns gear up for the upcoming midterm elections, maximizing voter reach across Connected TV (CTV) has never been more important.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like Samsung or LG are a critical part of the CTV ecosystem, offering advertisers access to audiences at the platform layer, where content discovery and viewing decisions take place. Their device-level perspective provides valuable insights into audience behavior and campaign performance, while their ability to aggregate inventory across fragmented streaming environments enables efficient reach at scale. As a result, OEM inventory has become an increasingly important component of modern political media plans, helping campaigns maximize both media efficiency and voter impact in an increasingly complex media landscape.

The question for buyers is no longer whether to include OEM inventory, but it’s how to make the most of it.

That question matters because as streaming continues to command a growing share of television viewing, reaching voters increasingly means reaching them across a fragmented ecosystem. At the same time, the 2026 midterm cycle is projected to be the most expensive in history, with billions of dollars expected to flow into political advertising and CTV continuing to capture a growing share of those budgets.

The rub is that each OEM gives advertisers access to a different segment of streaming viewers. While individual OEM partnerships can deliver significant scale and operational simplicity, today’s streaming households rarely exist within a single device ecosystem. Magnite Proprietary Research (2026) found that 29% of CTV owners own more than one TV brand, meaning a significant share of households span multiple OEM ecosystems. That reality creates an opportunity and challenge. By activating across multiple OEMs, campaigns can extend reach beyond any single ecosystem, and maintain consistent voter exposure wherever streaming happens.

The takeaway is simple: OEM inventory is increasingly a core part of every political media plan. But to maximize voter reach, buyers stand much to gain by looking beyond a single OEM and activating across the broader ecosystem.

It’s Not Just Technology. It’s Real Estate.

OEMs are often viewed primarily as hardware manufacturers, but their role in the streaming ecosystem has expanded significantly over the past decade.

In reality, OEMs control some of the most valuable real estate in streaming today. Many OEMs operate key components of the CTV experience, including operating systems, home screens, content discovery environments, FAST services, app marketplaces, and advertising placements that can shape how viewers navigate and engage with content.

“Streaming has changed how political campaigns need to plan television. CTV helps advertisers reach voters that linear TV may miss, manage frequency more effectively and measure incremental reach. By combining the scale of 49 million U.S. LG Smart TVs with first-party viewing insights and leading data partners, LG Ad Solutions helps campaigns reach the audiences that matter with greater precision and efficiency,” says Andrew Tint, Vice President of Programmatic Partnerships at LG Ad Solutions.

That unique position creates value for both buyers and publishers. And in doing so, OEMs are both creating their own unique inventory opportunities while often receiving a share of the publishers’ ad inventory that runs through their devices.

For buyers, OEMs offer access to:

• Premium owned-and-operated ad-supported environments 
• Valuable device-level and first-party audience insights, including Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data
• Negotiated publisher agreements to efficiently scale audiences beyond owned and operated properties.

For publishers, OEMs provide:

• Content distribution and discovery within some of the most visited destinations in streaming.
• Monetization opportunities through platform partnerships and inventory-sharing agreements.
• Additional demand sources that can help maximize yield.

Platforms like Magnite help centralize access to OEM supply, making it easier to activate, optimize, and adjust campaigns across multiple OEM partners through a single platform. 

The result is easy access to an ecosystem that extends far beyond a single streaming app or channel.

For political advertisers, that can be especially valuable as campaigns work to maximize voter reach ahead of Election Day.

The Bottom Line for Driving Votes

OEM inventory has become a foundational part of political CTV strategy. The opportunity now is not simply to activate OEM supply, but to activate it broadly enough to reflect how voters actually stream. 

No single OEM represents the entire CTV universe. While many households have just one or two TVs, those TVs—and the streaming devices connected to them—vary widely across brands and operating systems. Reaching voters at scale requires a strategy that accounts for that diversity rather than relying on a single OEM.

As campaigns prepare for the upcoming midterm elections, a multi-OEM approach offers a clear advantage: broader reach and more opportunities to connect with voters wherever they choose to watch.

In a cycle where every impression matters, the most effective OEM strategy is not to choose the right OEM. It is to ensure you’re not leaving OEMs, and therefore opportunities to reach voters, on the table.