The Lead
The comparison in Fifty Videos, One State turned up an advertiser the Old Goat was not looking for. Ranked by Google's own political-ads data, the largest U.S. advertiser for ads running since Sept. 5, 2026 is not a party, a campaign or a super PAC. It is Kalshi Inc, the prediction-market exchange, with at least $41.7 million across 101 ads. This dispatch is what the Google data and public reporting say about that, and what they do not.
What Google's Data Shows
DOCUMENTED, from the Old Goat's own query of Google's public political-ads dataset on Oct. 9, 2026 (saved as google_political_ads_kalshi_2026-10-09.csv). Google lists 348 Kalshi Inc ads since March 2024 and a lifetime spend of $57,915,900 for the advertiser. Of the 101 ads that ran since Sept. 5, 55 are video and 46 are text. Three of them are top-coded: Google reports their spend only as "$3 million or more," so the $41.7 million is a floor and the true figure is higher. The earlier dispatch, Fifty Videos, One State, gave the range as $41.7 million to $41.9 million; that upper figure undercounted those three ads, and the Old Goat is correcting it here.
The history is a ramp. In October 2024, the month before the last presidential election, Kalshi started 117 ads worth roughly $0.75 million to $0.91 million. Through 2025 the account stayed small. Starting in March 2026 it ran 153 ads worth at least $42 million, with the monthly total climbing from about $4 million to $5 million in the spring and summer to between $16.6 million and $18.1 million for ads that began in September. Thirty of its videos reached 10 million or more impressions. The largest single ads each cost $1.5 million to $2.5 million.
The States It Skips
DOCUMENTED. Almost every Kalshi ad is targeted to the whole United States, and 310 of the 348 carry exclusions. Washington State is excluded in 301 of those. Michigan appears in 144, Nevada in 140, Ohio in 100, New York in 97 and the District of Columbia in 91. INFERENCE, the Old Goat's: those are the kind of places where state gambling regulators have been fighting prediction markets, and the exclusions look like a legal map. The Old Goat has not checked each state's dispute and is not claiming the reason. NPR's headline in May says Trump is supporting prediction-market companies in their fights with state gambling regulators.
An AI Ad, Admitted
REPORTED. Kalshi is also the subject of two of the best-documented stories about AI-made advertising. In June 2025 it aired an AI-generated spot made with Google's Veo 3 video tool during Game 3 of the NBA Finals on YouTube TV, reported to have been made by an independent creator for about $2,000; the company said it wanted to use AI in future campaigns. In September 2026, Futurism reported that the YouTuber Elliott Choy found his own apartment-tour video had been altered by AI into a Kalshi ad, changing his apparent race, and served back to him on YouTube. A Kalshi representative told NPR the ad was old, that the company no longer uses AI-generated ads, and that it is reviewing its relationship with the agency that made it.
Those are Kalshi's ads, not the administration's. The Old Goat includes them because the company is now the largest advertiser in the political-ads data and because they show, on the record, how fast and cheap AI-made video has become and how a company can run it at scale without the people in the footage knowing.
The Trump Connection
REPORTED. Donald Trump Jr. became a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi in January 2025, with a stake reported at about $300,000 when it was granted. Kalshi told CNBC his work concerns marketing strategy, not regulatory matters. He also joined the advisory board of its rival Polymarket in August 2025, and his firm 1789 Capital is reported to be putting about $300 million into Polymarket's $1 billion round at a $21 billion valuation (Yahoo Finance, Sept. 1, 2026). The advisory fee was not reported.
The record is thin where it matters. Nothing found says Trump Jr. directed Kalshi's Google ad buys, and Kalshi's stated description of his role is marketing strategy. The Old Goat does not know what that includes. The ads in question are product ads for a betting exchange, not pro-Trump messages, and the Old Goat has not opened them. Why Google files them in its political-ads data is also not established; the likeliest reason is its midterm election markets and hub, launched in July per CNBC, and that is a guess.
What the Old Goat Thinks It Means
This part is opinion, labeled as opinion. The Old Goat has been following the money that persuades. The biggest single check in that money this fall is going to a company whose paid marketing adviser is the President's son, whose rival has taken a reported $300 million from that same son's firm, and whose product sits on top of the outcome of the election. NPR's May headline says Trump is supporting these companies in their fights with the states. The Old Goat's INFERENCE is that this is a conflict worth tracking even if nobody did anything improper: a family with a financial interest in how many people bet on elections is adjacent to the machinery that decides how many people see the ads that bring them in. The record shows adjacency, not direction. The Old Goat will say it plainly when a document shows more than that.
Counter-evidence, plainly: Kalshi has competitors and critics on every side, it says it has stopped AI-generated ads, and its spend is on its own product. The Old Goat has no evidence that any of it is coordinated with the White House or the President's campaign.
When the spender and the product are both the election, ask who gets paid when you click.
The Old Goat will update this dispatch as new filings arrive, and welcomes corrections to any figure above. The Old Goat's Kalshi tab tracks the markets themselves.