Avoid Pitfalls That Sap Digital Ads' Political Impact

Campaigns and causes are going to be pouring money into digital advertising in the 2016 races, with online political advertising expected to reach nearly $1 billion, over six times that of the previous presidential campaign cycle. But the power of digital advertising to reach the right person with the right message in the right environment can be undermined by a few common pitfalls, wasting precious dollars, warns a recent MediaPost article by Avi Goldwerger. For example, campaigns must realize that programmatic advertising is automated, so problems can occur when a programmatic platform is too centered on targeting user demographics and not enough on where the ad is actually placed. For example, a wholesome family-values candidate's ad focused on reaching males aged 25-54 could show up on a porn site! Campaigns need to use available tools to target the right environments on programmatic platforms and to block wrong placements across any media partner. Digital fraud and viewability are two other factors that can undermine ad effectiveness and waste dollars. Fraudulent traffic, according a recent industry report, makes up 10.9% of all traffic, warns Goldwerger. Most of the fraud is due to bot traffic (computer programs acting like humans and filling out voter forms or clicking ads) and phony Web sites. Lack of viewability, on the other hand, occurs when an ad is served to a real audience but is placed so that it remains unseen, say at the the bottom of a page where users fail to scroll down to see it. To target the 43% of digital media that will be viewed and free of fraud, Goldwerger advises campaigns to choose media sellers and programmatic platforms that operate with viewability as targeting criteria and that have media quality safeguards in place. For more, read http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/264708/digital-politics-seizing-the-right-ad-opportuni.html