Campaigns Must Arm to Win the 2016 Digital Race

Campaigns and causes will be competing on a digital battlefield as never before in the 2016 elections. A recent MediaPost.com article by Mike Werch, marketing manager of SocialCode, offered eight key digital strategies to boost message impact, expand voter base and capture donations. Werch advises: 1) target unaffiliated voters by serving digital ads to lookalikes, people with the same interests and behaviors as those in the voter, donor or e-mail subscriber files; 2) recapture donors with digital remarketing (use of Website Custom Audiences) to target people who visit a donation page but fail to donate; 3) apply digital insights across channels, using the creative test results of digital video to hone TV or print ads, for example; 4) improve primary audience response with digital geo-targeting, testing geo-targeted digital video to perfect expensive local TV ads, for example; 5) segment audiences for more digital leverage, using Facebook's rich user data, for example, to deploy ads relevant to targets' demographics, behaviors and interests; 6) do a local-interest digital campaign in an area before hitting the pavement, and follow up with conversion-focused ads to build mailing lists; 7) do digital "get out the vote" campaigning, messaging politically inactive Facebook users who also match political affinity targeting as an example; 8) test 2016's new and improved ad options for political campaigning, such as Facebook's lead ads for mobile sign-ups and conversions with pre-filled forms. For more detail, read http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/264971/how-2016-presidential-candidates-can-win-the-digit.html

Election Spurs Sale of Valuable Voter, Donor Data

One way presidential hopefuls raise money for 2016, and pay off debts from prior campaigns, is to rent out valuable voter and donor data. And that's a boon for other candidates and causes. "A lot of folks that ran in 2012, their lists are on the market," Ryan Meerstein, senior director for Client Strategy at Targeted Victory, a Republican tech firm, recently confirmed to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. Targeted Victory, for example, paid $1.1 million to rent list data from Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid. GOP presidential bidder Rick Santorum has earned nearly $281,000 by renting supporter lists from his 2012 election effort, while 2012 GOP also-ran Newt Gingrich has earned $434,000 off supporter lists. The most coveted data, campaign pros told the Pittsburgh newspaper, includes the personal contact information of campaign donors. Also desirable are lists of supporters "willing to turn an online action into an offline action," such as attending a rally or posting a lawn sign, added Meerstein. Of course, national candidates are not the only source of valuable political data. On the market are voters by city, state and local campaign, members of special-interest and advocacy groups, and donors to a range of politically relevant causes, with many of those lists selectable for party affiliation. Political lists are rented via data brokers, like Beyond Voter Lists, the article notes. But we would add that a good broker will help candidates and causes avoid the problems also cited in the newspaper article, such as overuse and poor targeting, by checking usage history and making sure list data is updated and matched with client targeting. See http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2015/06/01/Political-fundraising-campaigns-manage-debts-by-selling-data/stories/201506010025

Can Facebook Kick Up 2016 Political Donations?

Will Facebook become a more significant ingredient in the political fundraising mix of 2016 candidates and causes? Consider mid-term election research conducted by Facebook, as reported in a recent medipost.com article. Facebook tracked the Senate campaigns of Democrats Michelle Nunn of Georgia and Mark Udall of Colorado. OK, so the candidates lost, but their Facebook ads won in terms of donor power. Facebook found that not only did Facebook ads provide at least a 200% ROI but people who saw the ads gave more on average than those who did not. Specifically, people who viewed Udall's Facebook ad gave $47.87 on average, while those who did not see the ad gave an average $42.70. There are good reasons Facebook will be an attractive fundraising addition in 2016, argues a recent mediapost.com article by Shawn Kemp, co-founder of ActionSprout, which helps nonprofits optimize Facebook. Facebook has the deepest social reach: 42% of Americans have a Facebook account, compared with 19% on Twitter, the second-largest social network. Facebook offers attractive targeting options such as geo-targeting and look-alike audiences. And Facebook ads, while not a key donation driver alone, can have a multiplier effect in multi-channel efforts, as shown by Facebook's mid-term election experiments. So, for example, combining Facebook ads with an e-mail campaign to the same targeted list could boost giving per donor. For more, see http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/248996/facebook-advertising-matters-for-political-fundrai.html#

Political Ads Grab 20% of Sept. Cable TV Spend

With $1 of every $5 spent on cable TV advertising in September dedicated to political ads, at least per independent cable ad rep firm Viamedia, cable fans are seeing their usual beer and insurance ads pushed aside by midterm election messages this year. As reported recently by The Fix. The Washington Post political blog, the share of political ad revenue is way up this year in Viamedia stats -- compare September's 20.5% share for political ads with the 13% share of four years ago -- and still growing. Why the cable blitz? Viamedia theorized to The Fix that not only has easing of campaign finance restrictions pulled more money into political ad spending but also that data technology for cost-effective, narrow targeting of cable audience, especially geo-targeting, is drawing dollars away from broadcast. As proof of the current tightly targeted TV ad effort, Viamedia notes that just 16 channels comprise 92% of its political ad revenue in 2014. To see the cable networks leading in political ad share across 30 Viamedia markets, check out http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/08/1-of-every-5-spent-on-cable-tv-ads-in-september-was-political-per-one-firm/

Do Digital Myths Drive Away Campaign Ad Dollars?

Why has digital marketing failed to catch fire with political campaigners? Despite hype about its cost-effective success in the 2012 election, online is still forecast to make up only a minor portion of 2014 campaign ad spending (3%), way behind the big bucks for TV. In contrast, brand advertisers spend 25% of budgets on digital. In a recent Campaigns & Elections magazine article, Bryan Gernert, CEO of Resonate, took on three myths that he believes cause political campaigns to underuse digital marketing. First, he notes, political campaigns are comfortable with their offline voter files and donor lists, and assume that online "big data" is geared to brand marketing. Gernert argues that this short-sighted focus on voter lists -- keying on party affiliation and past voting behavior -- misses insights from digital sources about current, dynamic voter values and issues, which is vital to wooing swing voters. Bringing static offline voter data online and enhancing it with up-to-date digital data points will allow campaigns to better target both swing voters and partisans. The second myth is that political campaigns have time and geographic constraints that could stymie success with digital. Not true, asserts Gernert. In fact, online is the ideal medium for tight geotargeting and quick turnaround. Geotargeted online marketing provides flexibility, real-time feedback, and more rapid testing, analytics and response than traditional channels. Finally, many politicos apparently still assume that voters rely more on traditional media for political information. Another myth exposed by the facts: Pew Research found that, by 2012, online/mobile sites had surpassed radio and newspapers as the main source of news consumption. Resonate's own data shows that the percent of registered voters who say they are moderate to heavy consumers of online news is only slightly lower than those who are moderate to heavy viewers of TV news. See the complete article at http://www.campaignsandelections.com/magazine/us-edition/446727/debunking-3-myths-preventing-campaigns-from-embracing-digital-ads.thtml