According to Ad Age, there is a broad trend being played out across the advertising landscape. Using data to target audience segments and make smarter media buys in digital. Political numbers absolutely reflect that as digital is replacing traditional ad spend in this vertical.
Politicians are assigning ad budgets for digital. And, online digital advertising is not covered by the “equal time” laws that TV and Radio must abide by.
In fact, Borrell Associates, which tracks and forecasts ad spending, said that a total of $1,415 billion was spent on online advertising by the local, state, and national campaigns this cycle.
How do you access these local digital ad budgets for political campaigns? State-wide and national elections will already have a political agency or advertising agency handling their digital campaign. However, local (city, county, district) races offer an opportunity; think Mayors, City Council, Coroner, Family Court Judges, Sheriff… it is a long and healthy list of opportunities!
Also, you can find out who is running through Google by simply typing “who is running for office in “____” and list your county and state. Check Secretary of State websites and look under the “elections” heading. You can check out Ballotpedia.org for listings of all types of local elected offices as well as ballot initiatives.
Get the candidate (or campaign manager) interested in what you have to offer by talking about how you can get in front of their ideal registered voters by targeting their households at a high frequency 30-45 days prior to the election. Plan out your needs analysis questions. Ask about their target voter and get specific: age, gender, income, political affiliation, interest. Where do they live? How many votes are needed to win? (Their win number can help you determine a budget). Do they have a database of names to target? Do they want to have different ad creative for different voter targets?
Then, talk about the digital products available to reach their target voters.
One product perfect for political campaigns is advertising on Facebook and Instagram. In fact, $2 out of every $5 spend on political digital ads went to social media sites in 2016 with Facebook the biggest beneficiary.
In addition to Facebook and Instagram, you can reach voters down to the specific household with Household IP Targeting. Direct mail has always been a popular method for politicians, and political direct mail spending did increase 6% from the 2012 election to the 2016 election. However, for digital, it increased 789%!
You can also reach voters on their smartphones while they are on the go with Mobile Conquesting (you can even target by political party affiliation). You can use Native Ads to target by age, issues or where the potential voter has been observed. And, you can reach very specific groups of people with Targeted Display and Video ads across all devices and geographically targeted to the specific area the campaign wants to reach.
