Last week, Pandora announced its intention to join the political fray by offering ad spots to candidates for office, according to MediaPost. Just eleven months remain until Election Day, which means that candidates need to tap every available outlet in order to get the biggest outreach possible.
While internet radio has not traditionally played a major role in political campaigns, political marketers would be wise to hop on board. The internet radio giant, Pandora, is only increasing in popularity, and at the end of the 2011 third quarter, the company was up 102 percent in profits from last year, according to Beacon Equity Research. As more and more mobile users join the free service, advertisers are seeking out new and innovative ways to reach these users effectively.
For political campaigns, which must directly appeal to a highly geo-centric audience, IP Zones targeting is the only sensible approach. IP Zones targeting allows marketers to identify qualified audiences through the demographic profile of the IP Zone that is tuned in. This means political advertisers can target constituents down to a particular district or neighborhood with messaging and issues that are relevant for that neighborhood. Campaigns don't have to waste money blasting generic ads to places where they'll have minimal appeal and be wasted.
IP Audience Zones by Semcasting uses IP analytics to target the most qualified audience for any given campaign. Using high-quality demographic and voter history data, IP Audience Zones locates the users who are most likely to be responsive to an ad and targets them at a sub-zip code level. Targeting based on demographic profiles using IP Zones allows advertisers up to 77 times more accuracy than standard zip code level with nearly 100 percent reach. This enables political marketers to limit their capital investment while maximizing their results.