Hey, remember that blog post from January on addressable TV advertising for political campaigns? Well, the topic is back up for discussion. This week the Wall Street Journal featured a piece on how political ads are moving toward employing a more targeted approach to TV. By combining TV ratings data with voter information and consumer research, campaigns are able to reach relevant voters based on their television preferences. The article continues, “Such specifics about people and how to reach them can help campaigns determine where to find groups of pivotal voters, both large and small, and target them at the lowest possible price.”
But, again, what is much, much cheaper than TV advertising? Online targeting. What’s more is that email and online digital marketing campaigns can be verified, calculated and adjusted for directly and correctly targeting political audience segments. With tools like our Smart Zones, campaigns can bid on qualified pre-targeted audiences based on voter history, demographics and location in real time--honoring consumer privacy through the use of publicly available offline data.
But digital is still just another box that political advertisers check. The article states, “Campaigns will devote about 57% of their overall advertising budget to broadcast TV, according to projections by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, and another 15% on cable. Digital advertising, meanwhile, will account for just 7% of the average campaign budget, less than half of the amount most candidates will spend on direct mail.”
We need to begin to view digital as the more rewarding and efficient investment that it is, rather than placing our money and hopes on reaching the voters watching “The Bachelorette.”