Now, this is interesting—or should we say influential?
Nexxen, the programmatic advertising platform and DSP, has partnered with influencer adtech company ADvolution to bring influencer-based audience segments into its DSP to support political campaigns just in time for the midterms. (Hey, you had us at the first part, but the second part is especially interesting.)
Using the segments, political advertisers can target and measure campaigns across channels including mobile and CTV.
Why This Matters:
ADvolution essentially turns influencer engagement into targetable audience data. The company aggregates signals tied to celebrity and creator fandoms — including engagement with influencer content, owned web and in-app activity, newsletter opt-ins, and contextual interest signals — to build audience segments advertisers can activate programmatically. Through the Nexxen integration, those audiences can now be layered into political media buying alongside more traditional voter and behavioral data.
This is a sign of the times, really. Political advertising has increasingly become influencer-driven, with politicians partnering with creators aligned with their views, appearing on podcasts, and increasingly trying to become influencers themselves. This partnership essentially brings that shift into the programmatic advertising ecosystem.
That makes sense, of course. Whether you’re Starbucks or Marco Rubio, influencer marketing and borrowed audience affinity work. Most brands are already investing heavily in influencer marketing and looking to spend even more there. There have even been broader industry discussions about programmatic budgets shifting toward influencer marketing. Deals like this could represent a middle ground between the two.
Experts React:
Alex Chatfield, Co-founder and President, ADvolution, said this about the partnership in the launch press release:
“For too long, high-value audiences have remained invisible to traditional targeting. By integrating our fandom signals into the Nexxen DSP, we are finally giving advertisers the tools to target those ‘hard-to-reach’ communities where true influence and conversation reside.”
Our Take:
This is cool, right? (Nexxen has made some solid announcements over the last year.) What’s especially interesting here is the idea of translating influencer affinity into something programmatic buyers can actually activate at scale. Influencer marketing has traditionally lived in a separate bucket from DSP-based media buying, with different budgets, tools, and measurement approaches. Partnerships like this start to blur those lines.
If more influencer data becomes available programmatically, it could change how advertisers think about audience targeting altogether — moving beyond standard demographics and behavioral signals toward communities built around shared fandom, influence, and online identity.
