Election Day is under two weeks away, which means about one-quarter of political advertising budgets have yet to be spent.
But where political advertising campaigns are spending their money this year has changed. TikTok and Adobe banned political advertising, and during the last election cycle Facebook and YouTube tightened their rules to make it harder for campaigns to allocate their money.
But television commercials have found a new home in connected TV. Hypertargeting means even candidates with smaller budgets can afford some CTV commercials. And “in-person retargeting,” or showing up to knock on doors in areas that have been targeted with political TV advertising, is very much a thing, according to Grace Briscoe, the head of political business and SVP of client development at Basis Technologies, which has run 850 political ad campaigns so far this year.
One candidate received a warm welcome after knocking on the door of someone who had seen CTV ads for a candidate, Briscoe says. Needless to say, the agency that placed those ads was very happy.
But the use of data to target political ad campaigns is still dicey, after Cambridge Analytica’s stolen data tarnished many people’s view of political ad targeting. What that company did was “gross,” Briscoe says.
Location data is being used in the current campaign cycle in a number of ways. Basis worked with L2 to offer targeting not only in the 435 congressional districts but 6,700 state districts. The project was complicated by this year’s complex redistricting process, which involved lawsuits and back-and-forth disputes over the shape of certain districts (which are reapportioned every decade after the census).
Another political location data tactic is to figure out which devices overnight in a district – a sign someone lives in a place vs. commutes there – then target people during the day even when they commute into other districts, Briscoe says.
Public voting files often include party affiliation, if someone has voted previously and details like a phone number, Briscoe says. But what can feel strange – or creative – is how voters can get scored on different issues or even targeted on social media by their likes (or dislikes) of everything from what celebrities they follow (think Joe Rogan) or where they shop and eat (Whole Foods vs. Walmart).
But sometimes the basics are even more important. If candidates want to win an election, they must avoid firing up their competition. Example: Many candidates avoid showing ads to voters who oppose their views. Turns out that approach only encourages voter turnout among people who plan to vote against – not for – the candidate running the ads.
