How Digital Advertising Can Transform a Political Campaign

The past few years have brought about major changes in the way local political campaigns have embraced digital. Each election cycle, political campaigns rely more and more on reaching their voters in new ways. If done properly, digital advertising can be very effective in persuasiveness, raising campaign funds, getting people to the polls, and gaining votes. According to a recent study published by Borrell Associates, online political spending is set to reach over $1 billion across local, state and national campaigns in 2016! Of that, about $500 million is being spent on local campaigns. So, there is a huge opportunity for digital advertising for local races and local ballot issue initiatives (city, county and district.) One of the great things about digital advertising for political is that there are no “equal time” laws. Unlike political campaigns that run on TV or radio where you must abide by the Communication Act, this does not apply to digital advertising. Therefore, frequency can be very high when executing a digital campaign for a political client. Another great thing about digital advertising is the targeting capabilities. Your ideal voter can be targeted down to characteristics such as geographic location, online and offline behavior, voting history, gender, ethnicity, education level, income, and more! Household IP Targeting lets campaigners target their potential voters with amazing precision. It can be used to target registered voters right down to the household level with digital advertising at a very high frequency starting 35-40 days prior to an election. In the final days and hours of a campaign, the right digital assets and frequency could set a campaign apart.