Let’s cut to the chase: 2023 was a challenging year for publishers.
Halfway through 2024, however, many publishers are feeling hopeful, especially as election season heats up and puts a focus on news – a category with an extremely engaged audience.
Publishers’ first-party data can provide a window into engagement insights, user behavior patterns and more. Having this data readily available for political advertisers not only provides transparency but helps them set more informed strategies to reach target audiences, including voters and other policy-minded groups.
But how can publishers best position themselves to maximize their success in this critical moment?
Uncover possibilities with first-party data
Publishers can use first-party insights to make changes across properties that improve the user experience. For example, segmenting users based on age and location to help advertisers reach voters in swing states. Or looking at reader data to realize that content related to taxes or immigration laws has high engagement.
Most political candidates and interest groups want to reach undecided voters and those in key battleground states, so combining content consumption and location data can be incredibly valuable. This strategy is effective in improving campaign lift by more precisely targeting users by their demographics and demonstrated on-site behavior, all in a privacy-safe way.
However, publishers that use these insights should use them as a force for good, making sure to vet partners and always keep the reader’s interests in mind.
Supporting quality journalism
Readers rely on the news to help them make educated voting decisions. By supporting quality journalism, advertisers can reach a highly engaged audience while ensuring key information remains accessible to voters when they need it most.
While there can be some apprehension from advertisers around news, there are tools and strategies available to boost their confidence in the quality of their investment. Extensive blocklists are detrimental to publishers that depend on advertising to fund their content. It’s important that publishers and ad tech vendors alike have tough conversations with advertisers and agencies, urging them to eradicate block lists with persistence to drive change.
Organizations like NewsGuard can help advertisers safely invest in news and diversify ad spend. And there are plenty of AI-powered tools, like contextual targeting solutions, that provide stronger insights for publishers to build data-driven editorial strategies while helping advertisers make more informed spending decisions.
Rather than broadly blocking all news, advertisers can target topics and keywords of interest to their audiences to show up in suitable environments that align with their brand and campaign goals.
Beware of generative AI risks – and rewards
AI is a double-edged sword. A high-visibility election season is all the more reason to brush up on your knowledge to use it in the best way possible.
Not only should publishers consider ways in which they can use generative AI in their own businesses, but they also must be aware of how advertisers are using it to generate ad creative.
Though the concept isn’t new, deepfakes have found new momentum with the rise in generative AI. AI-generated videos can appear to promote phony deals and put brands at risk, like a recent scam involving a deepfake of Taylor Swift claiming to give away Le Creuset cookware. Now imagine such deepfake scams applied to political ads.
While deliberate deepfakes are bad enough, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can introduce unintentional inaccuracies.
To ensure the ads they’re running are from trusted, real brands and to protect the reader experience, publishers are forming closer, more direct relationships with advertisers through private marketplace or programmatic guaranteed deals.
Despite the risks, AI can also be used in positive ways. Today’s publishers are being challenged to adapt to changing consumer preferences and maintain the quality journalism that audiences expect, all with fewer resources. AI-powered content tools can generate video thumbnails, edit footage and even create basic video teasers from scratch.
Tools like natural language processing algorithms have improved newsroom operations by enabling more efficient workflows through sentiment analysis and real-time fact-checking.
Put election news on center stage
The sheer volume of information during an election year can be overwhelming for readers. If they can’t access what they need quickly, they’ll likely go somewhere else.
Creating a website section specifically for election coverage can help readers feel confident in relying on your site for the info they need. Centering political news on your site can engage new audiences and make finding information easier.
Some audiences prefer other delivery formats, such as video or audio. Adding video can create more valuable placements for advertisers. Diversifying your methods of storytelling can also bring in new readers and engage existing ones for longer.
After a tough 2023, publishers can’t miss a beat in this big moment, even when they’re coming up against industry challenges. And the impacts are huge. The future of our government relies on voters who need accurate and accessible news to make educated voting decisions. Industry collaboration, integrity and transparency will go a long way toward publishers making it out of this election year strong.
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community.
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