Past Two Weeks Sees $210 Million in Ad Spending; $20 Million Spent on AI Ads This Cycle

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) May 28, 2026 – Ad spending in congressional and gubernatorial campaigns over the past two weeks topped $210 million, elevating spending this cycle in those races to just under $2 billion.

Moreover, in a new line of analysis, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) has identified at least $19.7 million in spending on ads that are known to be generated or enhanced through the use of AI tools during the current election cycle, which is surely an undercount. To identify these ads, the WMP followed mentions of AI-generated ads in news media, searched for ads with an AI disclaimer and kept a close watch for deepfakes, where video depicts someone as doing or saying something they did not do. (For more, see our About the Data section.) This spending was on 33 unique advertisements aired on broadcast television, CTV and digital venues.

“We have seen a rapid increase in the use of AI ads in just the past two months,” said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.  “Twenty of the 33 ads that we have tracked premiered since the beginning of April this year.”

There are some party differences in the sponsorship of the tracked AI ads, with 70 percent coming from conservative or Republican sponsors, 18 percent coming from liberal or Democratic sponsors and the remaining coming from sponsors whose political leanings do not obviously map along partisan or ideological lines.

Just under half of the ads, 48 percent, contain a disclaimer indicating that AI was used in the ad’s creation.

“Our analysis most certainly understates the amount of spending on ads generated or enhanced through the use of AI because the federal government and many states do not require the labeling of AI use,” explained Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.  “While we are able to catch the obvious deepfakes, such as one ad in the Maine gubernatorial race where a Republican candidate is depicted as holding a pile of cash while Barack Obama pats him on the back, we miss less obvious uses of AI.”

Table 1 shows the top political advertisers in the past two weeks, ranked by spending.  Tom Steyer, running for a top-two spot in California’s race for governor, has invested almost $30 million in ads over the past two weeks, while a group called CA is Not for Sale, No on Steyer has spent about $6 million on anti-Steyer ads.  A group called Working Families for Healthy Communities Supporting Becerra for Governor has spent about $4 million on ads supporting Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra.

Money is also flowing liberally in Georgia, where Rick Jackson spent over $10 million in the past two weeks in his campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.  His opponent, Burt Jones, has spent a bit over $4 million during that same time, which covered the period up to the May 19 primary and into the run-off election, which will take place on June 16.

Other big spenders over the past two weeks include the Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund, which backed John Cornyn in the May 26 Texas Senate runoff election. The victory fund, which coordinated with the Cornyn campaign, spent over $5.5 million between May 11 and 24.

The group Protect Progress, which supports pro-cryptocurrency Democratic candidates, has spent money in Georgia’s 13th district, Maryland’s 5th district, and Texas’s 18th district.

Of top 25 spenders in the last two weeks, 16 are not candidates, with a mix of groups active in one race versus multiple races.  This includes Defend American Jobs, which has spent money in 11 congressional campaigns over the past two weeks, promoting certain Republican candidates as in lockstep with President Trump.

Table 2 shows that over $44M was spent on political ads in just the last two weeks in California’s gubernatorial contests, with the vast majority of that spending, as mentioned previously, coming from Tom Steyer himself. This brings the total spent on political advertising in California to $283.4 million dollars cycle-to-date.

The Georgia gubernatorial primaries added almost another $18 million in ad spending to make it $132.4 million spent cycle-to-date so far.

South Carolina has a primary on June 9, and both Democratic and Republican candidates have spent money on ads, as has a mix of outside groups.  One such group, American Measure, has spent over $1.2 million in the last two weeks attacking Nancy Mace, a candidate for the Republican nomination.

An additional $15.5 million dollars was spent in the final two weeks leading up to the Texas run-off election on May 26 where incumbent Senator John Cornyn was defeated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The totals overall in the Texas Senate primaries (for both the Democratic and Republican campaigns) topped $164 million, and the results set up a likely even more expensive general election contest.

Over 95 percent of spending in the Michigan Senate race in the last two weeks ($5.9 million of $6.17 million) has come from two outside groups, Center Forward and Center for Democratic Priorities, promoting Haley Stevens.  The party primary in the race is in early August.

Several other Senate races have featured more than $3 million in ad spending in the last two weeks, including Alabama where several Republicans campaigned for the nomination in advance of the May 19 primary.  A run-off between Jared Hudson and Barry Moore is scheduled for June 16.   Several outside groups weighed in on the GOP primary, including American Values First, which spent nearly $1.4 million in the last two weeks attacking Jared Hudson.

A total of $33 million was spent in the primary for Kentucky’s fourth district where incumbent Tom Massie was defeated by another Trump-endorsed challenger, Ed Gallrein, for the Republican nomination on May 19. Nearly a third of that spending (almost $10 million) came in the final week of the campaign.

Spending in Maryland’s sixth district continues to heat up in advance of the June 23 primary, with an additional $3.4 million being spent, increasing the overall total to $12 million so far.

There was also significant spending in two Texas races (CD 18 and CD 35) in advance of the May 25 run-off elections.  In both, nearly all of the spending on advertising was from outside groups.  In TX-18, Protect Progress spent over $2.6 million promoting Christian Menafee in his campaign to oust longtime incumbent, Al Green.  In TX-35, which featured a Democratic and Republican run-off, six outside groups were active–three in each primary.

By and large, outside groups were responsible for the vast majority of spending in the top 10 House races over the last two weeks.

Advertising data reported here for 2025-2026 come from AdImpact with analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. All cost estimates for ad spending by medium use AdImpact’s methodology.

The CTV category includes ads distributed over devices where an input is connected to a television (e.g., Apple TV, PlayStation, etc), streaming via set-top-boxes, including video on demand (e.g., Dish or XFINITY streaming) and in apps available on smart TVs (e.g., YouTube or the Hulu app, etc).

AI in ads tracking reported here comes from the Wesleyan Media Project’s original assessment of election advertising that either explicitly states in a disclaimer that it uses AI or has been reported by news media and/or by AdImpact to include AI-generated or AI-enhanced content. We investigate advertising that our coders flag as potentially incorporating AI (as of this writing, our coding has just started and is not up-to-date on ads aired through May 24), and we are tracking news mentions of such use and adding labeling to our database, so we can assess known prevalence over time. This tracking is undoubtedly an underestimate given there are a lot of ways in which AI might be incorporated that may go undetected.

The Wesleyan Media Project provides real-time tracking and analysis of all political television advertising in an effort to increase transparency in elections. Housed in Wesleyan’s Hazel Quantitative Analysis Center – part of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life – the Wesleyan Media Project is the successor to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which disbanded in 2009.  It is directed by Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government at Wesleyan University, Michael M. Franz, professor of government at Bowdoin College and Travis N. Ridout, professor of political science at Washington State University. WMP personnel include Breeze Floyd (Program Manager), Pavel Oleinikov (Associate Director, QAC) and Yujin Kim (Post-Doctoral Fellow).

The Wesleyan Media Project’s real-time tracking in 2026 is supported by Wesleyan University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Wesleyan Media Project is partnering again this year with OpenSecrets, to provide added information on outside group disclosure and candidate status.

The Wesleyan Media Project’s digital advertising tracking is supported by the contributions of students in Delta Lab, an interdisciplinary research collaborative focusing on computationally-driven and innovative analyses and visualizations of media messaging. We are also grateful to our Coding Supervisors Saul Ferholt-Kahn and Helen Xie and the numerous student research assistants who facilitate additional content analysis of television and digital advertising.

Periodic releases of data will be posted on the project’s website and dispersed via LinkedIn, Bluesky @wesmediaproject.bsky.social and Twitter @wesmediaproject. To be added to our email update list, click here.

For more information contact: media@wesleyan.edu.

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