This year, the U.S. political advertising market is projected to reach $16 billion, increasing over 30% compared to 2020 elections.
The billions of ad dollars currently flooding this ecosystem have only risen in recent election years, as local and national candidates battle to blanket constituents in electoral messaging across channels like social media, text messaging and CTV.
What will be the competitive edge in this crowded landscape? We will dive into the state of the political advertising landscape, and the strategies essential to helping political candidates and their teams cut through the chaos.
The Campaign Key: Transparency
Strategically, the political industry has relied on repetition. This most often manifests as a deluge of campaign messaging, following constituents across their digital ecosystem. However, today’s campaigns must move beyond brute force, to establish a strategy that looks beyond just reach in their campaign efforts.
An advantage for political candidates and their consultant teams comes from knowing not only who their voters are, but how to reach them across the crowded and rapidly-changing digital media landscape.
Our proprietary AudienceDesigner (ADS) onboarding platform offers a 90%+ match rate to voter files, with activation times in as little as 10 minutes. Solutions like ADS’ announced real-time-voter-measurement (RTVM) capabilities can further enhance political marketers’ ability to understand which members of their audience were reached, which were not and the messages that are resonating with them.
Unlocking Individual Insights
With deep party-line entrenchments, a candidate from one party likely won’t be doing herself any favors by advertising to a stronghold for the opposite party. However, through enhanced targeting efforts, candidates can gain more individualistic insights, identify those who are undecided or leaning, as well as expand their understanding of the issues that matter to them.
Reaching individual voters goes beyond a single ID. The ADS platform utilizes a constellation of touchpoints that holistically make up someone’s online identity and help to paint a complete picture of who they are, across channels. This ensures not only that campaigns reach unique individuals, but that advertisers are able to optimize their distribution efforts and measurement capabilities at the same time.
These capabilities will be particularly vital, considering that local issues are anticipated to be at the crux of voter decision-making, this election season. Advertisers cannot evaluate an audience effectively by using the standard knee-jerk reactions — relying on generalizations of the issues they care about most. Political advertisers will need to be more nimble than ever, enhancing their advertising time-to-market as these key differentiating issues enter the cultural zeitgeist.
Responding in Real-Time
Across platforms and throughout the campaign lifecycle, measurement serves the same vital role. The political objective may drive different processes in order to accomplish goals around awareness, fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts, however, evaluating its performance remains a critical component of campaign success, particularly for emergent channels.
Consider the ad industry’s latest obsession— CTV. Many of the prized publishers for this medium have shunned political advertising, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, or, like YouTube, blocked data targeting on their platforms. There is an ongoing scramble to seize the remaining inventory, although debate remains around the return it offers. Ultimately, in order to reach a plurality of voters, a cross-platform measurement strategy is essential.
RTVM is able to monitor impression delivery at the individual level— and even determine who amongst the target audience has not been served. With this capability, and hourly updates refreshing this data in real-time, candidates and their teams are empowered to make in-the-moment adjustments to their advertising strategy, reaching a targeted audience at an impressive scale.
Creating Compelling Campaigns
A campaign’s messaging is only as powerful as the people it reaches. Political ad saturation has historically overwhelmed constituents, but it is only the symptom of a greater disease— a lack of understanding around campaign measurement. By knowing more about their audience and where to reach them, campaign messages can transcend awareness and lead to action, and enhance turnout for election day.
Ready to elevate your campaign? Learn more about our services, or drop us a line to see how we can help.
Semcasting : Aug 19, 2015 11:00:51 AM