An Illinois Republican candidate needed to build name recognition quickly ahead of a competitive governor’s race. The campaign had two goals:
The campaign wanted to understand not just where ads were delivered, but whether the messaging actually resonated with voters. That meant measurement had to be built from the start.
Madhive ran a CTV-only campaign targeting zip codes across Illinois, with an audience strategy built around Primary GOP Voters, Republicans, and Independents. Over 30 days, the campaign delivered over three million impressions.
Alongside the media buy, Madhive integrated Upwave brand lift measurement, surveying exposed households against a matched control group to isolate the causal impact of ad exposure on voter perception. The study tracked six metrics:
The campaign focused on reaching voters in premium, high-attention CTV environments while measuring how exposure impacted voter perception across different audience segments.
The campaign outperformed platform norms on the metrics that matter the most at this stage of a race:
Both are statistically significant, confirming the lift was driven by ad exposure, not noise. Consideration, Familiarity, and Favorability all trended positive.
Within the core target audience of Primary GOP voters, Republicans, and Independents, the campaign delivered exactly what it was built to do - and the impact extended well beyond the base:
The campaign also broke through in markets that typically resist, large cities and the Chicago metro, where both Aided Awareness and Ad Recall lifted at the 80-90% confidence level, with additional movement in Consideration, Familiarity, and Favorability among urban audiences.
Among Democrats and past supporters of the incumbent governor, the campaign drove:
The campaign wasn’t just reinforcing existing support, it was increasing recognition and consideration among persuadable and opposing voter groups.
Among registered voters and those planning to vote, the campaign also achieved statistically significant lift in Aided Awareness, Ad Recall, and Consideration. The voters most likely to show up on election day were the ones the campaign reached and retained.
Lift in aided awareness
Lift in ad recall
