Madhive today said it had partnered with AdImpact to bring competitive advertising spend data into its local intelligence platform, giving broadcasters, agencies and local advertisers that use the New York-based company a view of who is spending, where and on which screens across linear television and streaming. The announcement, datelined New York on October 22, 2026, arrives 12 days before the November 3 midterm elections, in a cycle that AdImpact projects will be the most expensive on record.

In Short

Madhive sells software that local TV stations and ad agencies use to plan and buy ads, and it is now plugging in AdImpact's records of who is buying TV ads in each local market. That matters most to the people selling and buying local TV and streaming ads, because they can see what competitors spend before they set prices or plans. What changes is that this rival-spending data sits inside the same tool used to build and buy the campaign, rather than in a separate report, although Madhive has not said when it will be switched on.

What the deal covers

The integration is narrow in mechanism and broad in coverage. AdImpact supplies competitive advertising spend data across broadcast, cable and streaming, with coverage across 41,000 zip codes and 210 markets, according to Madhive. The 210 figure matches the number of US local television markets, so the dataset reaches every market in the country rather than a sample of large metros.

Inside Madhive, that data will be available to media sellers and buyers working in categories such as automotive and political advertising. According to the announcement, it shows market share by advertiser, network, station, streaming app and market. Searchable metadata fields break the information down by brand taxonomy, advertiser, brand, product and parent company, which Madhive says gives "a detailed view of advertising strategies across screens and markets."

The data will sit in Maverick AI, which Madhive describes as its proprietary local intelligence layer drawing on more than a decade of campaign, market and vertical insights. The stated purpose is to help clients and Madhive's own teams identify who is spending and where opportunities remain untapped. For sellers, that means new revenue opportunities. For buyers, according to Madhive, it means planning and investing more strategically.

Note the tense. The release says the AdImpact data "will be added" to Maverick AI. It does not give a date on which clients can query it, does not say whether access carries an additional fee, and does not disclose financial terms between the two companies. Nor does it say whether the data will be available to every Madhive client or only to particular tiers or partners.

The selling side and the buying side

Madhive's platform serves both halves of the local market, which is what makes the integration different from a standalone spend report. The company describes itself as "the only ad platform built for local media, combining seller tools with a local-first DSP." That claim of uniqueness is Madhive's own and is not independently tested here. In practice, the same company provides proposal-generation tools to the station sales teams and a demand-side platform to the agencies buying from them.

Competitive spend data cuts both ways in that setup. A station seller who can see that a car dealer's rival has moved budget onto a streaming app in the same market has a reason to call. A buyer who can see that a political campaign's opponent has bought heavily on a particular station has a reason to change the plan. Both of those scenarios are implied by the release, which describes sellers uncovering "new revenue opportunities" and buyers planning "more strategically", though Madhive did not publish examples or case results.

The announcement also refers to the ability to "drive incremental reach and target new audiences." Incremental reach - the share of an audience reached by one channel that another channel missed - depends on knowing where a campaign already runs. Spend data alone does not measure audiences, so how Madhive converts competitive spend signals into reach estimates is not explained in the release.

What the companies said

Nicki Harkrider-Probey, chief revenue officer at Madhive, framed the deal around information rather than inventory. "Local advertisers need more than just CTV inventory - they require true market intelligence to pinpoint growth opportunities and maximize their media investments," she said. "By integrating AdImpact's robust competitive insights into our platform, we're providing our clients with unprecedented visibility into local spending dynamics. This actionable data empowers them to uncover untapped revenue streams, optimize cross-channel planning and buying, and execute higher-performing campaign strategies across both linear and streaming."

Don Norton, general manager of data solutions at AdImpact, pointed to the movement of money between screens. "As ad dollars follow audiences to CTV, local advertisers need more than just reach, they need actionable intelligence on where their competitors are investing," he said. "By bringing our competitive spend data to Madhive's broadcaster and agency partners, we're putting sharper planning and buying intelligence in the hands of the teams making local media decisions every day."

Neither executive gave figures on expected usage, revenue or performance.

AdImpact's numbers have grown since June

AdImpact was founded in 2014 as a source of political advertising data and now tracks advertising across linear TV and streaming, local and national. According to the company, its technology detects and tracks ads across more than 3,500 broadcast and cable stations, over 400 streaming apps and devices, and more than 40 million smart TV screens in all 210 US markets. It says it processes more than 60 billion CTV impressions every week, and tracks more than 100,000 brands and advertisers, including more than 54,000 local advertisers on CTV. The AdImpact Platform includes AdMo+ for political advertising and Ask AdImpact, a natural-language AI assistant.

Those figures are larger than the ones AdImpact used earlier this year. When PharosGraph and AdImpact launched a real-time voter narrative tool for the midterms in June, AdImpact described coverage of more than 90,000 brands and more than 19,000 local advertisers. Weeks later, when AdImpact added Polaris I/O signals to target more than 4,000 new advertisers per month, the same 41,000 zip code and 210 market coverage was cited. The categories are not identical. "Local advertisers" in June is not necessarily the same measure as "local advertisers on CTV" today, and AdImpact has not published a reconciliation, so the jump from 19,000 to 54,000 cannot be read as a like-for-like growth rate.

Why does AdImpact's political heritage matter here? Because political spending is the category in which local competitive data has the clearest commercial value. Campaigns buy against named opponents in defined geographies on short timelines, and a station's political inventory is finite.

Madhive's local position

Madhive has been building out its AI layer through 2026. On May 27, Madhive's Maverick AI agents brought local-first intelligence into the DSP, adding agentic capabilities across discovery, planning, activation, optimization and reporting, alongside a Model Context Protocol server. Earlier that month, Madhive named Luke Valvano CFO to lead its local media AI push. In June, Gray Media moved its local inventory onto Madhive's AI DSP, giving 117 markets access to Maverick AI and Madhive's political audience data from partners including L2, Tunnl, Data Trust and TargetSmart.

According to today's announcement, Madhive is trusted by local media groups including Fox, Scripps and Hearst, as well as agencies such as Lifebrands, and powers more than 50,000 campaigns for small and medium-sized businesses every day. Its platform covers the campaign lifecycle from proposal generation and planning to omnichannel buying, real-time optimization and measurement.

Madhive has previously said Maverick AI-optimized campaigns in 2025 delivered a fivefold increase in return on ad spend and two to four times stronger return on investment than baseline. Those figures were company-reported, and today's release repeats none of them for the AdImpact integration.

Why the timing points to the midterms

Madhive is explicit about the political context. The release says the capabilities are "particularly relevant amid the influx of political advertising dollars ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as local media buyers compete for audiences and inventory across linear TV and streaming."

The scale of that influx is well documented. Midterm ad spending has overtaken the 2024 presidential race, with AdImpact projecting $11.6bn for the 2026 cycle against $11.2bn in 2024 and $8.9bn in the 2022 midterms. By AdImpact's June channel split, broadcast was expected to take $5.6bn and CTV $2.6bn, with cable at $1.4bn.

Madhive cites a broader figure. According to BIA Advisory Services, US local advertising spending is projected to reach $186.1bn in 2026. BIA's forecast, published on September 14, 2026, raised that total from an April estimate of $184.5bn and put political spending at $9.7bn, up from $8.4bn in April. Most of the incremental political money in BIA's revision went to over-the-air television and streaming. Excluding political, BIA projects local advertising at $176.4bn. BIA and AdImpact measure political spending differently, which is why the two political totals do not match.

The selling window is closing fast. Meta, for one, blocks new US political ads for eight days before the midterm vote, from October 27 to November 3. Whether Madhive's clients will have the AdImpact data inside Maverick AI before election day is not stated.

A crowded market for spend intelligence

Competitive ad spend tracking is not a new category, and AdImpact is not alone in packaging it with AI. In July, Nielsen gained a real-time view of 5.5 million brands with Ad Intel AI, a conversational layer over a dataset spanning 23 media types in more than 90 markets, queryable through the Model Context Protocol. Local TV measurement has also shifted, as Sinclair and 14 other broadcasters signed with Comscore for local TV in April, with coverage across all 210 designated market areas.

What distinguishes the Madhive arrangement is placement rather than data. Spend intelligence has traditionally been a research product, consulted before a plan is drafted. Putting it inside the platform that generates proposals, builds plans and executes buys removes a step, at least in principle. It also concentrates information. A seller and a buyer on the same platform could be looking at the same competitive picture from opposite sides of a negotiation.

For local media sellers, the practical question is whether competitive data changes pricing power. A station group knows who bought its own inventory; the AdImpact data adds what the same advertisers bought from rival stations and streaming apps in the market. For agencies, the question is cost and accuracy. AdImpact detects ads rather than receiving spend figures from advertisers, so its spend numbers are estimates derived from tracked occurrences and impressions. The release does not describe the estimation method or margins of error.

There is also a structural point about CTV. Local streaming inventory is fragmented across hundreds of apps and devices - AdImpact says it tracks more than 400 - which makes competitive activity there harder to piece together than on a fixed list of stations. The claim that AdImpact covers 54,000 local advertisers on CTV is therefore the most commercially relevant number in the release, even if the methodology behind it is not published.

What remains unknown

Several points are not addressed in the announcement:

  • Availability date. The data "will be added" to Maverick AI, with no launch date given.
  • Pricing. No information on whether clients pay separately for AdImpact data.
  • Access scope. No detail on which client types or tiers receive the integration.
  • Data refresh. No detail on how frequently AdImpact spend data updates inside Madhive.
  • Method. No description of how competitive spend is estimated from tracked ads, or how it feeds Madhive's reach and overlap calculations.

Those details will determine whether the integration matters for the final 12 days of the midterm cycle or mainly for the automotive, retail and local services budgets that follow it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Madhive, a New York-based local advertising platform that works with broadcasters including Fox, Scripps and Hearst, and AdImpact, an advertising intelligence company founded in 2014 for political ad data. Quotes come from Nicki Harkrider-Probey, Madhive's chief revenue officer, and Don Norton, AdImpact's general manager of data solutions.

What: AdImpact's competitive advertising spend data, covering broadcast, cable and streaming across 41,000 zip codes and 210 markets, will be added to Madhive's Maverick AI intelligence layer. It shows market share by advertiser, network, station, streaming app and market, searchable by brand taxonomy, advertiser, brand, product and parent company. No launch date, pricing or financial terms were disclosed.

When: Announced today, October 22, 2026, 12 days before the November 3 midterm elections.

Where: The United States, across all 210 local TV markets, for linear and connected television.

Why: Madhive says local sellers and buyers need visibility into competitors' spending to find revenue, plan across linear and streaming, and compete for inventory as political money arrives. AdImpact projects $11.6bn in 2026 political ad spend, and BIA forecasts $186.1bn in total US local advertising this year.