The Video Advertising Bureau today released an infographic distilling key findings from its "The Lead Story" report, showing potential voters trust television news at a rate six times higher than social media - and that nearly half take a measurable action after seeing a political ad on TV.

The infographic, titled TV News Wins. There's No Debate!, draws on a custom survey of 2,319 U.S. adults fielded in December 2025 in partnership with research firm Dynata. The underlying report, "The Lead Story: How Multiscreen TV Drives Cross-Partisan Engagement for Political Ad Campaigns," was published by VAB on March 17, 2026. The infographic presents a compressed summary of its core data points, organized around trust, authenticity, and ad effectiveness among potential voters.

The figures arrive at a moment when political advertising budgets are shifting structurally. PPC Land has reported that political CTV spending for the 2026 midterm cycle has doubled to $2.7 billion, making the question of which medium generates the most credible environment for political messaging directly consequential for media buyers and campaigns.

The trust gap between TV and social media

The headline number in the infographic is stark. Potential voters are six times more likely to identify TV as their most trusted source of information compared to social media, according to VAB's analysis of the December 2025 Dynata survey.

That gap does not exist in isolation. A separate finding shows that 51% of potential voters name social media as the top source of fake or misleading information. In other words, the medium that registers lowest for trust simultaneously registers highest as a vector for disinformation, at least in the perception of the voter population surveyed.

The authenticity dimension reinforces this pattern. Potential voters are twice as likely to say political ads on TV feel more authentic versus social media, according to VAB. The word "authentic" is doing specific work here. Authenticity in this context is not about production quality alone - it encompasses whether the platform itself is perceived as a reliable context for serious information. A 2024 PPC Land article on Effectv's multiscreen political ad tools documented how advertisers already positioned multiscreen TV as a vehicle for reaching voters across screens precisely because cohesive reach required a unified approach to linear and streaming inventory. The VAB consumer data provides the demand-side rationale for that supply-side argument.

First discovery and the role of linear TV

Where do potential voters first encounter candidates and their views? According to VAB, potential voters are twice as likely to first hear about candidates and their political positions on TV versus social media.

This finding matters for campaign budget allocation. If TV functions as the primary discovery channel - where voters form initial impressions - then the credibility environment of that first encounter shapes how all subsequent advertising is processed. The March 2026 PPC Land analysis of the full Lead Story report noted that the survey was segmented across five distinct groups: potential voters, non-voters, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Sample sizes were carefully controlled, with 1,514 voter respondents, 636 Republican respondents, 612 Democrat respondents, and 546 Independent respondents. The cross-partisan consistency of the trust findings - not just among one political cohort - is what gives the data its broadest application for political advertisers.

VAB uses the term multiscreen TV throughout its research to describe the combined ecosystem of ad-supported linear and streaming television. This is not a synonym for broadcast alone. It encompasses the full continuum from cable news to ad-supported streaming services, and the infographic's figures apply to that combined environment, not to any single platform or delivery mechanism.

Journalism quality as a pull factor

Among the specific attributes that potential voters value in TV news, 67% say they appreciate it for the high quality of its journalism, according to VAB. That figure is not simply a measure of loyalty to a medium. It describes how the journalistic standards associated with TV news translate into a qualitatively different viewing environment from algorithmically curated social feeds.

This matters for non-political advertisers as well as political campaigns. When a brand or a candidate places advertising adjacent to content that 67% of potential voters associate with high journalistic quality, the credibility transfer is structurally different from what occurs in social environments that the same population has already marked as unreliable. VAB's April 2026 report "And That's the Way It Is" extended this argument to commercially defined audience segments - adults 35 to 54, households earning $100,000 or more, and full-time employed adults - finding that multiscreen TV news dominated social media, search engines, and AI on virtually every trust and engagement metric.

What voters do after seeing a political TV ad

Perhaps the most commercially specific finding in the infographic is behavioral rather than attitudinal. According to VAB, 49% of potential voters take an action after seeing a political ad on TV.

The infographic specifies what those actions include: visiting a candidate's social media page, checking voter registration status or polling station location, using a voice assistant such as Siri or Alexa to learn more about a candidate or issue, and scanning a QR code or texting a phone number to request more information. This list is technically significant. It shows TV advertising functioning as the initiating signal in a multi-step behavior chain that then flows into digital channels - search, social, and voice interfaces.

For media planners focused on last-click attribution, the implication is that a TV impression can generate search queries, social visits, and voice commands that will not show up in CTV or linear measurement unless the attribution model explicitly connects the upstream event to the downstream action. The full Lead Story report, covered by PPC Land, documented that 60% of potential voters watch sports programming in a typical week, 64% watch drama, and 53% watch true crime or mystery content - meaning the reach of political advertising on TV extends well beyond news adjacency alone.

The broader context for political TV advertising in 2026

The VAB infographic lands in a 2026 midterm environment where the scale and complexity of political advertising on television has grown considerably. PPC Land has reported that Comscore and Yahoo DSP launched a product called Proximic Political Audiences in March 2026, designed specifically to help political campaigns navigate linear-to-CTV crossover measurement. The technical premise of that partnership was that political advertisers have historically struggled to unify messaging across linear television and streaming - a problem that the VAB data illustrates from the audience side.

Gray Media's partnership with Madhive's AI DSP, covering 117 markets and targeting the 2026 midterm cycle, reflects the same structural pressure from the supply side. Local television remains one of the most consequential environments for reaching voters in specific markets. The VAB survey data, showing that TV is the primary discovery channel and the most trusted information source for potential voters, provides the audience-level rationale for that continued investment.

The trust and authenticity gap the infographic documents also intersects with ongoing concerns about the information environment in digital advertising. PPC Land's coverage of the ad tech trust layer in June 2026 noted that TAG certifications for major platforms had lapsed and that LinkedIn invalid traffic hit 17.62% - precisely the moment when record political sums are being committed to channels whose measurement is less settled than the linear medium they are displacing.

Why the data is technically limited

The infographic presents ratio data - six times more, two times more - without providing the absolute base rates. That design choice makes the figures legible quickly but obscures the scale from which the multipliers are calculated. If 3% of potential voters named social media as their most trusted source and 18% named TV, the six-times ratio holds, but the absolute trust levels in both cases would be low. VAB's full Lead Story report, which runs to 39 pages, contains the underlying absolute figures.

The survey was fielded by Dynata in December 2025. That timing places it before the most active phase of the 2026 midterm cycle, where political advertising volume on both TV and social platforms will intensify considerably through the autumn. Whether the trust and authenticity gaps documented in December 2025 persist through heavy campaign spending periods is not something the current data can address.

Additionally, VAB is a trade organization whose members include premium multiscreen TV providers and distributors. The research is structured to address questions relevant to its membership's interests. That does not make the data invalid, but it is context that any planner using the findings as primary sourcing for budget allocation decisions should note. The methodology - a Dynata online panel of 2,319 U.S. adults 18 and over - is standard for consumer attitude research, and Dynata is a well-established research firm in the advertising industry.

What the findings mean for marketing professionals

For agencies and media planners, the specific combination of findings in the VAB infographic has a direct application. The six-times trust advantage for TV over social media is not simply a justification for television spending. It is evidence that the credibility environment of TV news advertising carries a measurable audience perception gap relative to social inventory - and that this gap is particularly pronounced in political and high-stakes messaging contexts.

VAB's February 2026 report with TVision documented that premium video platforms on CTV deliver 33% stronger co-viewing, 14% higher eyes-on-screen attention, 18% greater sustained attention, and 49% longer viewing sessions than YouTube. The trust data adds a qualitative dimension to those quantitative attention findings. An impression in an environment that 67% of potential voters associate with high-quality journalism is structurally different from an impression served alongside social content that 51% of the same population has labeled a primary source of false information.

The 49% action rate after political TV ad exposure is the metric most directly relevant to campaign planners trying to connect impression delivery to downstream voter behavior. It suggests that political advertising on multiscreen TV functions not as a passive awareness channel but as an active initiator of information-seeking behavior across digital, voice, and mobile channels. That mechanism - TV as the first signal, digital as the response channel - is increasingly supported by the infrastructure being built across the industry, including the Comscore-Yahoo DSP partnership and the Madhive-Gray Media integration.

Pharma brand behavior after the FDA's September 2025 crackdown on deceptive drug advertising offers a parallel data point. Prescription drug brands increased multiscreen TV spending by 53% in the six months after the enforcement action, spending $4.95 billion between October 2025 and March 2026. The logic was similar: TV's established compliance norms and the audience perception of it as a more regulated, trustworthy environment made it a preferable channel for brands facing heightened scrutiny. Political advertisers facing the challenge of credibility in a high-misinformation environment face an analogous structural incentive.

Timeline

  • August 2024 - Effectv, Comcast's advertising sales division, launches a multiscreen TV advertising suite for political campaigns, including a partnership with Dynata for brand lift insights
  • December 2025 - VAB and Dynata field the Media Consumption and Political Sentiment survey across 2,319 U.S. adults 18+, covering five distinct voting and party affiliation groups
  • February 24, 2026 - VAB and TVision publish "The Impression Gap", finding premium video platforms deliver 33% stronger co-viewing and 49% longer viewing sessions than YouTube on CTV
  • March 5, 2026 - Comscore and Yahoo DSP announce Proximic Political Audiences, designed to help political campaigns unify messaging across linear TV and streaming
  • March 17, 2026 - VAB publishes "The Lead Story: How Multiscreen TV Drives Cross-Partisan Engagement for Political Ad Campaigns," based on the December 2025 Dynata survey of 2,319 U.S. adults
  • March 22, 2026 - PPC Land covers the full Lead Story report including cross-partisan trust data, content consumption patterns, and ad response behavior
  • April 14, 2026 - VAB releases "And That's the Way It Is", a second report extending the trust findings to high-value commercial audience segments
  • May 2026 - VAB publishes analysis of pharma TV spending, finding Rx brands increased multiscreen TV spend by 53% after the FDA's September 2025 crackdown on deceptive advertising
  • June 14, 2026 - Gray Media partners with Madhive's AI DSP to target 117 markets ahead of the 2026 midterm advertising cycle, with political CTV spending projected at $2.7 billion
  • June 26, 2026 - VAB releases the "TV News Wins. There's No Debate!" infographic summarizing voter trust, authenticity, first discovery, and action data from the December 2025 Dynata survey

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), a trade organization headquartered at 220 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, whose members include premium multiscreen TV providers and distributors. The research was conducted in partnership with Dynata, a first-party data and research firm.

What: An infographic titled "TV News Wins. There's No Debate!" presenting six key data points from VAB's December 2025 consumer survey: potential voters are six times more likely to trust TV over social media; twice as likely to find political TV ads more authentic; twice as likely to first hear about candidates on TV; 67% appreciate TV news for its journalistic quality; 51% identify social media as the top source of fake or misleading information; and 49% take a measurable action after seeing a political ad on TV.

When: The underlying survey was fielded in December 2025 by Dynata. The full "Lead Story" report was published on March 17, 2026. The infographic summarizing its findings was released on June 26, 2026.

Where: The research covers U.S. adults nationally. VAB is based in New York, NY. The infographic is published on the VAB website at thevab.com and is available for download as part of the organization's Insights library.

Why: The infographic is intended to provide political and non-political advertisers with a compressed data summary on voter trust and ad effectiveness as the 2026 midterm election cycle enters its most active advertising phase. Political CTV spending for the cycle has been projected at $2.7 billion - double the prior midterm cycle - making the question of which medium generates the most trusted environment for political messaging directly consequential for budget allocation decisions.