Halloween approacheth, and as candy shelves are stocked with an endless bounty of confections, we wanted to offer some tricks and, more importantly, treats for better budget allocation as you plan media with your advertisers through the remainder of 2026 and into the new year.
But first, a bit of a spooky revelation. As Claire McKinley writes in our latest Basis blog, one might expect that the more time consumers spend with certain types of media, the more advertisers would want to invest in it. In reality, however, the two rarely match. Gasp. 
That gap between where consumers spend their time and where advertisers invest can create wasted spend, reduced performance, and inefficiencies in an ecosystem increasingly focused on demonstrating business impact. The bigger takeaway, though, is that time spent alone should not dictate media allocation. Where consumers are most attentive, receptive, and influenced matters just as much.
As noted in the article, divergences between the percentage of daily time spent by US consumers and the percentage of total US media ad spend show up across many advertising channels:
- Traditional TV: 17.8% of daily time spent vs. 10.4% of total media ad spend
- Subscription OTT: 15.6% vs. 3.1%
- Social networks: 12.5% vs. 27.7%
- Digital audio: 10.7% vs. 1.7%
- Radio: 9.8% vs. 2.1%
- Digital gaming: 8.6% vs. 1.9%
Those numbers are a useful gut check, not a prescription to simply move dollars from an “overinvested” channel to an “underinvested” one. The opportunity is to pressure-test legacy allocations against how audiences actually behave and how each channel contributes to campaign objectives.
Marketing teams can do that by pairing up-to-date audience research with platform-specific measurement, modern modeling, testing, and past performance data. The goal is a media mix built around what each channel is meant to accomplish and the outcomes it actually influences, rather than habit or spend patterns alone.
Curious where your media mix may be out of balance? Read the full Basis article for a closer look at what these gaps can tell us about smarter media planning.
Looking for more insights around measurement and effectiveness? Check out this webinar on which measurement approaches are driving results in 2026, the hurdles marketers face, and how teams can better translate the data they already have into strategies that move the needle.
As always, reach out with any questions!