How To Target The Right Audience In A Crowded 2024 Political Field
Learn how cutting-edge targeting techniques can maximize the impact of political campaigns this 2024 election season.
With the 2024 election buzz, Katrina Moore, sales director of StackAdapt, focuses on strategies and technologies for targeting the right audience in political advertising. She emphasizes precise audience targeting amidst the phasing out of cookies and the rise of more sophisticated advertising technologies.
As we approach the 2024 election season, the landscape of political advertising is undergoing a significant transformation, with audience targeting playing an indispensable role in shaping campaign strategies. With the gradual phasing out of cookies and the rise of more sophisticated advertising technologies, candidates who have not yet embraced the right technologies will find themselves far behind the competition next year.
As more digital environments become increasingly cookieless, it becomes harder for marketers to rely on third-party data for effective audience targeting. Political campaigns must refine their targeting processes to ensure the campaign’s message reaches the intended voter demographics and no ad dollar is wasted. Additionally, political marketers need flexible targeting tactics and execution strategies that allow them to pivot quickly as circumstances change throughout the political cycle.
The best way to achieve precise and flexible targeting in political advertising campaigns is to undoubtedly focus on first-party data targeting and measurement and CTV solutions. This will ensure campaigns succeed in reaching key voters and minimize wasted ad spend by excluding irrelevant audiences.
Embracing Connected TV (CTV) for Dynamic Campaigns
With flexibility, unlike traditional broadcast and cable ad buys, CTV allows for swift alterations in media plans, which is crucial for the dynamic nature of political campaigns. By running CTV, candidates can use digital metrics, including video completion rates and brand lift studies, to track the impact of their CTV campaigns, allowing for data-driven optimizations.
CTV offers sophisticated targeting capabilities unavailable to linear buyers, including the ability to avoid overexposing viewers to a candidate’s ad, strategically retargeting audiences who have seen a competitor’s ad, or retargeting across other digital channels, like online video or display. CTV also allows linear buyers to reach an incremental digital audience, often a younger demographic of cord-cutters, that cannot be reached through traditional buys.
CTV will soon come to dominate political advertising, but right now, the field is hesitant. According to eMarketer, while consumer time spent on linear TV versus streaming is roughly equal, only a fraction of advertising dollars are currently allocated to CTV, even though a key percentage of voters cannot be reached through traditional channels. This discrepancy presents a unique opportunity for political marketers to capitalize on CTV’s untapped potential and integrate it into multi-channel campaigns at low inventory prices. Political marketers who integrate CTV into their strategy will have a leg up on their less agile competitors.
Balancing CTV and Linear TV in Political Strategies
However, political marketers shouldn’t favor one channel over the other. Instead, a strong political strategy uses both CTV and linear as complements to one another. A critical strategy includes capturing and retargeting linear TV audiences across digital channels like cost-efficient CTV. By leveraging ACR datasets, digital audiences can be created based on TV viewership, including film and TV genres, streaming platform audiences, specific TV shows, or based on ad exposure.
This presents an interesting use case in competitive targeting or audience suppression. Political marketers can target swing voters exposed to a competitor’s TV ad to sway their opinion away from the opposition. Alternatively, marketers can suppress viewers exposed to their ad, avoiding overexposure and hitting reach and frequency goals without double-serving linear impressions on digital channels.
Optimizing Budget Allocation and Audience Reach
Another challenge linear marketers face when adding digital channels to their strategy is planning the budget appropriately between the two channels, specifically in quantifying the size of incremental audiences. If not done properly, marketers risk underspending or underestimating the full extent of their reach.
Forecasting reach across both channels helps understand the full extent of reach within important political districts and plan the budget accordingly. This helps marketers hit their reach and frequency goals across the two channels and understand the likelihood of delivering spend in full in a potentially small or competitive market. Measuring the incremental reach of digital audiences midway through campaigns allows marketers to shift the budget between linear and digital channels if needed.
See More: In A Cookie-Less World, First-party Data Is Marketers’ Bread And Butter
Harnessing the Power of First-party Data
First-party data has become another powerful tool in political advertising. When combined with demographic and geotargeting data, voter file data targeting can significantly enhance campaign effectiveness by ensuring marketers spend only on their intended audience. Political marketers test different messaging between voters affiliated with their party and swing voters while suppressing registered voters from the opposing political party, early voters, or those who have already mailed in their ballot.
Voter file data can be combined with complementary targeting tactics to create a cohesive “waterfall strategy.” While precise, the scale available for voter file targeting can be limited. Lookalike audiences can be employed to broaden voter file audiences to users who exhibit traits similar to those in the voter file dataset. Given large budgets and short flight dates, the additional scale may still be needed; third-party audiences can be added from vetted political data providers. Both strategies will help ensure campaigns spend their budget in full.
Integrating Strategies for Optimal Results
Marketers can leverage voter file data for targeting and also for measurement to understand the effectiveness of different digital strategies, including creative messaging or audience tactics. This approach not only aids in pre-election analysis but also in optimizing throughout the election cycle. By uploading voter file data mid- or post-campaign, marketers can attribute real-world actions like voting or registering to vote back to digital tactics. This data not only informs the ideal frequency of ad exposure to spur voter action but also validates the campaign’s targeting strategy by tracking the exposure of actual voters to the ads.
By integrating CTV, first-party data targeting, and measurement into their advertising strategies, political campaigns can significantly broaden their reach and optimize spending using precise targeting strategies. A cohesive strategy will incorporate all three tactics with existing linear buys to present a strong, multi-channel approach focusing on high-quality video inventory that will likely engage voters and focus targeting. In addition to cutting down on spending waste, focused targeting tactics, including voter file data and CTV campaigns, will ensure that campaign messages are heard and resonate with the right audience.
As we move towards the 2024 elections, embracing these technologies is not just an option—it’s necessary for any campaign aiming to have a meaningful impact in the evolving digital landscape of political advertising.
As an advertiser, will you seize the opportunity to lead your campaign through first-party data targeting? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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