This Candidate Isn’t On My Ballot . . . So Why Am I Seeing Their Ads? Explain this one.
(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/24/2026) This week, MIRS Editor Kyle Melinn received in the mail at his Lansing address a campaign flier for Mike Bouchard, who is running for a congressional district 100 miles away in Macomb County.
Meanwhile, at the Macomb County household of MIRS Senate reporter Samantha Shriber, a streaming ad featuring Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Grand Rapids), who is running for the Kent County state Senate seat 170 miles to the west, showed up on her Disney Plus.
And then, MIRS reporter Andrew Minegar, based in Kalamazoo County, saw an ad on Hulu critical of Will Lawrence, a candidate who will not appear on his 2026 ballot.
Detroit News reporter Craig Mauger tweeted that he received the same Bouchard flier, which generated responses from others outside of MI-10 who said they did, as well.
Mauger took a picture of the front side of the mailer.
The misdirected ads raise a question: Are campaigns deliberately reaching beyond their districts, or is their targeting missing the mark?
Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project and a political science professor at Washington State University, said streaming services and connected TV do well to target people based on age, gender, and possible political leaning much better than traditional broadcast television.
“It’s not perfect, right? Some campaigns use very sophisticated algorithms. Other campaigns, it might be a 19-year-old intern who’s buying the internet ad, and they don’t know how to use the dashboard very well,” Ridout said.
A national digital advertising political campaign company, speaking on background, confirmed that these are the reasons for this type of “bleed” in targeting advertising.
It's possible that journalists, especially known political journalists, could be the targets of outside advertisements just so their eyeballs land where the advertiser would like them to, the source conceded.
It was also stated that sporting events tended to end up with scattershot streaming ads because of the eyeballs on these events.
Ridout said the way streaming providers work can “confuse things.” If someone is near the border of a district, works in a district, or has even recently connected to Wi-Fi in a different district.
“While it’s more efficient, in most cases, than broadcast television, there’s still some error that creeps in there. Definitely,” he said.
He said the quality of data that campaigns have or that streaming services have can end up causing a negative ad for William Lawrence to show up in Kalamazoo County or a Glanville ad to show up on a streaming service in a Detroit suburb.
He said a resident of a specific targeted district may never see targeted ads because they don’t have their location tracking on or their location is disguised by a virtual private network, or VPN.
Ridout said the streaming and CTV media-buy environment is a hectic Gordian knot filled with middlemen and supply-side providers that further confuses the situation. Those keep the ad rates changing all over the place. It's also hard to nail down.
When campaigns use media buyers -- who can take around 15% of a buy – they can get a simpler experience of paying for what they want where they want it aired.
He said with broadcast and cable, the campaigns end up paying for a more shotgun approach, where connected television is more of a rifle.
“Not only going for specific geographic locations in the streaming and CTV world, but also going for particular demographics,” Ridout said.
