Digital Strengths Required Even in a "Wave" Year

Republicans are worrying, and Democrats rejoicing, over signs that 2018 may be a "wave election" year that sweeps Democrats to control of the House and maybe even Senate. Before Democratic hopefuls get cocky or Republicans throw in the towel, both should note a recent Campaigns & Elections article about lessons learned in Democrat Doug Jones' historic win in deep-red Alabama. C&E makes the point that, wave or no wave, a winning campaign has "got to leave it all on the field, regardless of what the forecast is ... To wit, Jones won by just over 20,000 votes—and few predicted he’d defeat Roy Moore." C&E cites six digital marketing lessons from Jones' victory. Start with realizing the importance of authenticity in both the message and how it is conveyed, especially in online ads and video where an authenticity will matter more than slick production. Note that digital success requires more than standard online ads; Jones' campaign invested heavily in social and engagement platforms, bought standalone video and audio inventory, used display and rich media, and maxed out what was possible on search. Third, C&R warns, a percentage-based budget that starts with heavy TV spending and divides small remaining percentages among other channels will risk missing that vaunted wave; C&E advises using an audience-first approach instead, maximizing reach and frequency for all marketing channels taken together and based on how various voting groups get their news and information. Fourth, campaigns need to focus on engagement as well as reach to get people to remember an ad in an extremely crowded media environment. That means investing in social media platforms and going beyond traditional display ads by using HTML5 and rich media to embed interactive content and voting resources in standard banners. Then get those engaging ads to more voters by using digital to expand voter reach, especially given the falling impact of traditional media channels (40% of voters watch no TV, C&E notes). But don't try to stretch a digital budget too thin at the outset striving for maximum audience; pick off priority audiences and build the program from there, C&E advises. See the whole article at https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/6-lessons-to-remember-during-a-wave-year

Who Do Voters Trust? Media, Politicians or None

President Donald Trump and his political and media supporters have been preaching against the "fake news." What impact has that had on voters? How much do voters trust the media vs. politicians? One year after Trump's victory, the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison commissioned a national survey to find out whom Trump supporters trust and how that confidence is related to whom the American people want to make political decisions. While support from Republicans clearly remains key to Trump’s chances for success, the survey reveals that party is less important than Trump's cult of personality. A representative sample of 2,000 Americans was asked, “When the news media and politicians disagree about the facts of a situation, which one are you more likely to trust?” and 70% of the public still chose the media. However, among those Americans who approved of President Trump’s job performance (about 38% of the sample), 80% said they trusted politicians over the news media. These were largely, but not exclusively, white men. Yet these same Trump supporters do not trust politicians in general with making important decisions about how our democracy works. Survey respondents were asked who they thought should be making our political decisions—ordinary people, politicians, or an equal mix of the two—and 69% preferred an equal mix. More surprisingly, only 6% of those who said they trusted politicians over the media (overwhelmingly Trump supporters) also said they wanted those same politicians making decisions about running the country. This suggests that Trump’s support is less about partisan loyalty or adherence to a philosophy of democratic governance than it is about confidence in Trump himself—and even that support has been dwindling to historic lows. It also suggests that Republican politicians hoping to ride Trump's coattails in the 2018 midterm elections may be in for a bumpy ride as they court his "base." For more, see https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/11/21/16684474/trump-voters-media-trust

Study Details Direct Mail Impact on Voters

Political candidates and causes in 2018 election campaigns will want to give direct mail a key role based on a recent joint study from the USPS and the American Association of Political Consultants: "Voters and Mail: Five Insights to Boost Campaign Impact." The study found, for example, that mail is especially effective in moving voters to action, with 66 % of Millennials (voters aged 18-34) and 52% of non-Millennials saying that political direct mail motivated them to search for additional information about a candidate. More significantly, 57% of Millennials and 54% of non-Millennials said that political direct mail helped them make a decision on how to vote. With an increasing number of voters choosing early and absentee voting, direct mail can help campaigns win votes before the polls open because voters rely on mail to remind them of deadlines. In fact, 81% of U.S. adults say they prefer direct mail when they don’t know about an absentee ballot deadline, and 69% wanted direct mail when they didn’t know about a voter registration deadline. However, with so many information sources competing for voter attention--from TV to social media to traditional mail--the most successful direct mail will cater to voter content preferences. Per the study, 82% of registered voters want campaign mail to address a candidate’s position on the issues, 74% indicated that they were interested in campaign mail that contrasts the candidate with their opponent on the issues, and 73% were interested in campaign mail that illustrated the candidate’s voting record on past issues. While voters are inundated with communications in national elections, it's important to remember for next year's midterms that direct mail has special impact in state and local races, especially for younger voters. For example, a study released by the Postal Service found that Millennials found direct mail to be key in helping make a decision about races at the state level (82%) and local level (80%). For more political mail insights, see the USPS/AAPC research at https://www.deliverthewin.com/voters-and-mail-5-insights-to-boost-your-campaign/

Game-Changer? Programmatic Ads, Survey Wed

A union of consumer survey data with programmatic advertising could help political campaigns pre-screen audiences for better ad targeting in the 2018 midterm elections. Two digital companies, Lotame, a data management platform for advertisers, and Survata, a market research/survey firm, have announced a partnership to create what they are calling a "segment validation product," per a recent Adweek story. Lotame will supply more than 8 billion data points to Survata, which will ping back against those points and survey an actual audience. A client of the partnership product can then independently target the right participants with ads. Andy Monfried, founder and CEO at Lotame, explained to Adweek that the new partnership will enable clients "to automatically verify third-party data validity as part of their data strategy" and "deliver on the promise of 'real-time' actionable insights through the use of enhanced data." Cleveland-based ad agency Marcus Thomas is already in line to test the system, according to the report. But it's easy to see the potential appeal to political marketers--for example to improve targeted response for fundraising-based digital advertising. Chris Kelly, Survata CEO, acknowledged to Adweek that, while brands will likely always be the primary focus, "this could indeed be used for political audiences, too." So expect to see some 2018 political candidates and causes drawn to a promise that their programmatic media buys can be launched with "full confidence the audiences they are targeting contain the right people," as Kelly says. For the complete story: http://www.adweek.com/digital/an-ad-tech-firm-and-a-survey-player-want-to-improve-programmatic-buying-by-pre-screening-audiences/

Texas Governor Election Was Direct Marketing Coup

The mid-term elections, seen by some as a slap to President Barack Obama's policies, simultaneously saw politicos of all stripes warmly embracing the data-driven, digital marketing strategies pioneered by the President's team. A case in point is the successful 2014 campaign of Texas' newly elected Republican Governor Greg Abbott, points out Direct Marketing News Senior Editor Al Urbanski. Abbott spent about $7 million on digital marketing and data analytics in 2014, compared with the paltry $100,000 or so spent on digital by Rick Perry's 2010 Texas gubernatorial effort. Teaming with Targeted Victory, a digital agency focused on Republican clients, Abbott's election team worked to build an engaged online audience that could be called to action, moving supporters from Facebook fans to e-mail recipients to donors to voters via 74 different marketing campaigns of targeted content. Analytics and ROI even guided traditional offline canvassing efforts, so volunteers knocked only on the doors of pro-Abbott voters identified as needing a little push to the polls. One result of his data-driven strategy was that Abbott won a majority of male Hispanic voters, a coup in a typically Democratic demographic, by using statistical modeling and targeting to get pro-Abbott segments within the demographic into the voting booth. For more detail, read The Direct Marketing News story: http://www.dmnews.com/this-governor-elect-got-direct/article/382966/

Midterm Wooing of Millennials Has Key Takeaways

Midterm campaigns have been working hard to woo millennials. The importance of the demographic target is clear: Those born between 1981 and the early 2000s now make up a quarter of the U.S. population, and roughly 45 million are eligible to vote. But millennials are also a hard-to-reach, easy-to-alienate cohort. A recent AdWeek article asked political marketing experts for takeaways from recent efforts to win millennial support. To appeal to this tech-centric, channel-agnostic and social media-obsessed generation, campaigns need to marry the right platforms with the right content, the experts advised. As far as marketing platforms, the stress is on a digital, "multiscreen" approach; a recent survey found that 30% of millennials use four or more digital communications devices daily, and the overall group checks mobile phones an average of 40 times per day. And when it comes to content, relevant, entertaining and informative messaging is critical. Experts interviewed by AdWeek warned that pitches not only need to be laser-focused to match millennials’ ideals and interests but must come across as sincere; millennials will spurn anything that smacks of hype, histrionics, hard sell, preaching or scare tactics. But perhaps one of the biggest challenges for campaigners is this demographic's distrust of politics and politicians. For example, a recent Reason-Rupe survey found that 66% of millennials believe government is inefficient and wasteful, and 60% think it abuses its powers. As a result, campaigns have gained by focusing on issues and values over party affiliation. Rob Shepardson, co-founder and partner in the creative agency SS+K, summed up: "Millennials will align with somebody regardless of political labels based on values. Communicate through issues, not through the candidate. Negative ads and politics-as-usual can turn millennials off. They are quite shrewd when it comes to marketing. You need to get to a point or a benefit that matters to them." For examples of recent campaign efforts that worked, or failed, to win over millennials, see the article: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/tapping-millennial-political-and-social-passions-ahead-midterm-elections-160563

Midterm Lesson: Web Ad Space Isn't Unlimited

Political campaigners are learning a surprise lesson in the midterm election battles: Premium space on the web is not infinite. Late-comers to the increasingly crowded digital space are finding that they've missed all the tastiest spots for video and display ads. A recent story in The New York Times underscored that savvy political players now must make pre-emptive strikes to ensure ad placement when and where it matters most. Online video spots are especially hot, and there are two main types: those a viewer can skip after just a few seconds, and “reserved buy” ads that run in their entirety before another video begins. The ads that can be skipped are unlimited but sold by auction so the price goes up as demand increases closer to Election Day. The ads that cannot be skipped, those that viewers are forced to watch for all 15 or 30 seconds before they can see content from their original search, are limited. Campaigns are hurrying to reserve this video ad type in advance to lock in a good price and ensure prominent display. Video ad space on popular sites like YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo and top news outlets is in short supply; there is already almost no remaining YouTube inventory for reserve buys in some very competitive races, the New York Times reports. Banner ads and home-page takeovers, in which ads from a particular buyer are the only ones prominently displayed on a website’s home page, are also being scooped up fast. “Smart campaigns book early, the same way that smart brands book television early,” Andrew Bleeker, the president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic digital marketing company, told the NYT. “We reserve most of the inventory for our clients in the spring to make sure something like this isn’t a factor.” For the complete article, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/us/campaigns-find-ad-space-finite-even-on-the-web.html?_r=0

Top GOP Data Firms Partner for Midterm Campaigns

Leading Republican data firms are joining forces ahead of the midterm elections, a testing ground for 2016 strategies in data-driven campaigning. According to a recent Advertising Age story, the two most prominent voter-data companies on the right, the Data Trust and i360, plan to align their databases, allowing clients using either system to tap into some of the same information about voters. The goals of Data Trust and i360 list exchange agreements are both to reduce data duplication through the partnership and to create a new ability for campaigns to access updated information via either company's system. Beyond refreshed addresses and phone numbers, the firms regularly update voter profile information, such as issues that interest particular voters, how much voters have donated, whether voters have volunteered for a campaign, etc. However, details on which data points will be shared -- such as the voter scores that the Republican National Committee (RNC) uses to quantify likelihood of voting Republican -- were not divulged to Advertising Age reporters. Meanwhile, Democrats show no signs of integrating the databases of the two main providers of data to the left -- NGP VAN and Catalist. This means that when an organization on the left, such as Planned Parenthood, works with Catalist, the updated information it filters back to that database is not also shared with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voter file managed by NGP VAN. Instead, the DNC seems to be moving to make "The VAN" its official data platform for centralizing development of apps, ad platforms and analytics software, according to the article. For the full story, go to http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/republican-data-firms-agree-voter-data-swap/294762/

Digital Ad Explosion Impacting Midterms and 2016

Digital advertising is seeing explosive growth in the 2014 midterm elections. A recent Politico magazine article cites estimates by Borrell Associates that $270 million will be spent nationally on digital campaigning, a 1,825% increase from 2010 when tablets first impacted the political scene. By 2016, Borrell sees online political spending at almost $1 billion, surpassing newspapers, direct mail and telemarketing for the first time. "If you’re trying to hit males 18 to 34, you probably want to be all digital," Amanda Bloom, a GOP consultant at BASK Digital Media, declared at last month's San Francisco conference hosted by Campaigns & Elections magazine. Campaigns are eager for the digital results they see in campaigns like Iowa's GOP Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, whose low budget Internet ad "Let's make 'em squeal" (noting her experience in hog castration) went viral and propelled her from third to first in the primary. Of course, the online tech giants -- Google, Facebook, Pandora and others -- are prepping for the political ad bonanza with new Washington strategists and election-oriented sales staff, per Politico. And ad planners for television, still the big dog of political spending, are also adjusting tactics to complement digital: Cross-promotional TV ads now urge voters to donate online and "like" Facebook, Instagram,Twitter and YouTube pages, while major TV ad buying agencies are touting in-house digital teams, Politico reports. For the full story, go to http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/2014-elections-digital-advertising-110322.html

Political E-mail Subject Lines: Why So Weird?

Political fundraisers' e-mail subject lines have taken a decided turn toward Crazy Town. A July article by Chris Good of ABC News highlighted just a few recent examples: "Can we chat real quick?" "Wow just wow," "Empty Beer Mugs," "STOP THEM," "I'm going to book your flight and hotel," "Sarah Palin berated me," "Here's the thing," and on and on. Most of these were not fundraising appeals by local fringe candidates but rather messages by knowledgeable political agencies, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or House and Senate campaigns. Why so weird? Blame it on the e-mail success of the Obama campaign back in 2012, with subject lines such as "hey" and "Do you still live in Illinois?" Those subject lines were scientifically tested on Obama's 13 million e-mail list and won more response. In 2014's midterm fundraising drives, political e-mail gurus are finding that offbeat and personal still test well. "People's inboxes are very much like their Facebook feeds right now," Anne Lewis, head of the Democratic Anne Lewis Strategies consulting firm, explained to Good. "What makes someone want to open an e-mail is if you've invoked their curiosity, or induced anger or... an argument." There's also a follow-the-leader factor, with House and Senate candidates seeking to emulate Obama's success, and smaller campaigns, faced with more limited test universes, borrowing from larger groups and races. But once everybody does it, impact can wain. Good cited the rise of new tactics for e-mail attention-getting: Subject line emoji (a DNC ploy); long subject lines (anti-"hey"); ALL CAPS (shouting works, too); lines ending with a colon (open for more); doom and gloom ("HORRIFYING," "bad news," "throw in the towel" wails the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee); and customized preview text. For more examples and discussion, see http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/empty-beer-mugs-political-mails-weirder/story?id=24416505

Study: Parties Face Polarized, Disaffected Voters

Partisan polarization, combined with growth of unpredictable, disaffected voter blocs, will challenge both Republican and Democratic candidates this year and in 2016, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. Pew's "voter typology" divides voters into cohesive groups based on attitudes and values to provide a "field guide" to the changing political landscape. The latest study describes eight voter types, including three groups that are strongly ideological, highly politically engaged and overwhelmingly partisan. Two of those three partisan voter types form the Republican base: Steadfast Conservatives (anti-government and socially conservative) and Business Conservatives (pro-business, limited government types but social moderates). Meanwhile, voters categorized as Solid Liberals provide loyal Democratic Party support. However, these three partisan voter types make up just 36% of the public and 43% of registered voters, which means victory for either party will depend on problematic wooing of votes from groups that are less predictable, less engaged and have "little in common with each other or the groups at either end of the political spectrum." Those five, less-partisan voter types are Young Outsiders (Republican-leaning but socially liberal), Hard-Pressed Skeptics (financially soured, former Obama backers), Next Generation Left (young, affluent, socially liberal but fiscally cautious), Faith and Family Left (Democrat-leaning but religious/socially traditional), and Bystanders (10% of the public and not registered to vote). Republican campaigns are likely to be further challenged by growing schisms between Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives over social issues, big-business power and foreign policy, Pew researchers add. For details of the Pew study, go to http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/

Rapid Growth Forecast for Political Online Ads

"Explosive" growth in online political ad spending is being projected by ad forecasting firm Borrell Associates. A political advertising outlay of $8.3 billion is forecast to flood all media markets for the midterm elections, up from the $7.2 billion spent in 2010, the previous midterm election year, according to the Borrell 2014 forecasts reported by Deadline Hollywood. But the shares of the pie going to broadcast TV, cable TV, online and newspapers are shifting. While broadcasters are expected to reap $4.6 billion this year, or 55.4% of the ad spend for all races and ballot issues, that take is actually down from its 57.5% share in 2010, and broadcast's share is expected to shrink further to 52.6% in 2016. Where's the money going? Cable and online are "the only media choices projected to gain share" this year, per the Borrell report. In fact, online’s projected $271.2 million is up 1,825.2% from its $14.1 million in 2010. Although online ads are expected to account for just three cents of every ad dollar spent on all 2014 political contests, "current forecasts call for explosive growth to continue, nearing the billion-dollar level by 2016′s Presidential election," according to another quote from the report. By 2016, online will account for 7.7% of ad spending, ahead of newspapers' 7.1%. Display ads and video will make up three quarters of this year’s online spending. Forecasters attribute political campaigners' new "fascination" with online to its targeting ability, quick response and relatively low cost as well at to generational shifts that see millennial voters "much more likely to turn to streaming video and social media" for political information. For a summary of the report, see http://www.deadline.com/2014/06/political-ad-spending-tv-online-borrell/

Lessons From GOP Cantor's Stunning Primary Loss

Stunned political pundits are trying to explain the Virginia primary loss of GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Are there lessons for campaigns and causes charging toward the midterm elections? Cantor's loss certainly was not due to a lack of money; Cantor outspent his Republican primary rival Dave Brat by 26 to 1 courtesy of big-business donors. So those facing big-money challengers take heart, and candidates with overflowing coffers take heed.  Fundraising that earns a "crony capitalist" label can come back to bite you: Cantor's unabashed big-donor image allowed Brat to successfully appeal to voters' populist sentiments. A recent analysis in The Atlantic magazine sums up other Cantor vulnerabilities that candidates will want to avoid. For example, don't go wrong on litmus issues: Cantor's support of certain pieces of immigration reform allowed Tea Party-stalwart Brat to win Conservative votes by accusing Cantor of "blanket amnesty" support. Next, remember that personality counts: Cantor, who has been described as arrogant and self-serving, apparently made more enemies than friends on his ambitious climb to House Majority Leader via leaps from moderate Republican to Tea Party and back toward the middle, and so earned distrust, dislike and Conservative responses ranging from apathy to outright opposition during the primary. And never lose touch with the home front: Cantor didn't pay attention to his constituent base while he played Washington power games and wooed donors. Plus, he then sought to change state central committee rules before the primary to minimize right-wing activists, a misguided effort to "vigorously poke a nest of already-angry hornets" as one Republican operative told The Atlantic. For more, see the article at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/six-theories-for-eric-cantors-loss/372552/

Get-Out-the-Vote Mail Can Be Key for Democrats

A recent New Republic article by Sasha Issenberg, a fellow at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, tackled a basic midterm challenge for Democrats: The coalition of young, demographically diverse, urban and mobile voters who sent Obama to the White House make up only 40% of those who normally vote in midterm elections; the regular midterm voters are primarily older conservatives. So if Democratic campaigns focus on winning over the people likely to cast ballots, they could be in trouble come November. "For a party populated by Unreliable voters, the midterm imperative is clear: ...go and turn out those who are already on your side but won't show up without a friendly nudge," argues Issenberg. Issenberg doesn't think that the way to capture those voters is an expensive TV ad war, however, especially since TV ad impact is "nearly impossible to measure." Instead, Issenberg argues that hundreds of rigorous tests in the last 15 years have "yielded a clear understanding" of the most effective get-out-the-vote methods: direct mail, phone calls and canvass visits. Unfortunately, few candidates have large enough volunteer forces for effective field operations, nor are there enough seasoned phone banks to handle millions of personalized election calls. That leaves direct mail as a proven, scalable, cost-effective tool. For example, by adding proven social motivation triggers to a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote letter, direct mail testing by Todd Rogers, a Harvard psychologist, found that mailers can boost the likelihood of voting by a third of the percentage point, Issenberg reports. Another recently tested concept involved adding a message that the voter may be called after the election to discuss poll experience (a subtle threat of accountability), which bumped up letter response by another 50% and dropped the cost per new vote to just $47. For the full article, read http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117520/how-democrats-can-avoid-going-down-2014-midterm-election

What's Behind the Early Start for Political TV Ads?

Political TV advertising seems to have started to flood the airwaves earlier than normal for the midterm elections. Before blaming the Citizens United decision and big-money PACs, consider these four other trends cited by Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group on a recent Political Wire podcast. First of all, the early start is not a new trend, she points out; political TV advertising, in volume and expenditure, has been starting earlier and earlier for the last three election cycles, as advertisers use the lower-rate period to define and attack opponents and catch voter attention. The Citizen's United (and McCutcheon) decision, which unleashed spending by outside groups and individuals, is just one factor; hot issues, such as the Affordable Care Act, and party strategy, such as the battle for control of the Senate, have sparked some early TV ads, too. Campaigns are also beginning to push their online and social media efforts in non-digital channels; even in the 2012 election, few TV ads promoted a digital presence, but more early TV spots are appearing to feature Twitter hashtags and urls at least, Wilner noted. Finally, groups outside of the parties and candidates are also trying to jump in early with a more positive spin than the attack ads that turned off some voters in 2012 -- if only to woo the electorate into accepting the negative ad blitz that is likely to follow as election battles heat up come fall. For more on Wilner's remarks, see The Week article at http://theweek.com/article/index/261387/whats-behind-the-surge-in-political-tv-ads

Midterm Campaigns Focusing on Women Voters

Both Republicans and Democrats are setting their sights on women voters in this year's midterm elections. An "enormous portion" of advertising will be "devoted to persuading women or repressing the women's vote," said Elizabeth Wilner, senior VP of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, in a recent Ad Age article. In Congressional races, Democrats hope to continue their previous edge with women voters by adding equal pay, minimum wage and other pocketbook concerns to the reproductive choice and access to contraception issues that gained them female support in prior elections. Democrats are even hoping to use the GOP's critical focus on the Affordable Care Act to their advantage since "in most households the person in charge of health care is a woman," as Ms. Kantar noted, and those women may like aspects of "Obamacare," such as free mammograms and allowing children to stay on parental health policies until they are 26 years old. Republicans are countering by showcasing their female candidates and supporters, and by using a less biting, more emotionally positive tone that strategists think will be more appealing to women this time around. For examples of actual campaign ad tactics, go to http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/political-advertising-enlisted-war-women/293243/

'Dark Money' Flooding Into Midterm Elections

Even as the Senate Rules Committee holds hearings on the rising tide of election spending by nondisclosing groups -- 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and 501(c)(6) trade associations -- the 2014 midterm elections are shaping up as a record-breaker for such "dark money" spending. So far in the 2014 midterm cycle, three times more dark money spending has already been reported to the Federal Election Commission than at the same point during the 2012 presidential campaign, reported an analysis by nonpartisan political-spending watchdog OpenSecrets.org at the end of April. The 501(c)(4) groups include Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, while 501(c)(6) groups range from the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute to the Koch-network's Freedom Partners. In the 2012 election, these 501(c) organizations, which do not claim politics as their primary purpose and which do not have to disclose donors to the public, spent more than $310 million overall. At this point in the 2012 elections, dark money spending was at an all-time high compared with the same point of any previous election cycle, totaling about $4.4 million -- six times more than spent in the 2010 midterms at the same point. But that's peanuts compared to the tally to date for the 2014 midterms, where dark money is already at $12.3 million. For more of the analysis, go to http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/how-2014-is-shaping-up-to-be-the-da.html

PACs Try More Positive Ad Approach in 2014

Super PACs and other outside campaigners for candidates and causes, long masters of the attack ad, are now trying to "accentuate the positive," to borrow from the Mercer lyric. Even the conservative Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity is making an effort to show a sunnier side, according to a recent story by The New York Times. In fact, 16% of the Americans for Prosperity spots so far this year have been positive, compared with zero positive ads in 2012, the NYT reported. By another estimate, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, its affiliated nonprofit, have produced 29% of their ads with a positive spin to date, compared with just 1% for all of 2012. The NYT story cites a Kantar Media/CMAG estimate that 29% of all ads by outside groups have been positive this election cycle, compared with 20% at the same point in 2012. Political pundits provide several reasons for a shift to the positive so far this year: Negative campaigning actually is spawning positive ads, as PACs launch responses to other PAC attacks. Positive campaigning is also seen as useful early in the election cycle to help define a candidate for voters and provide some immunity to later critical broadcast spots. Some political strategists also cite lessons from 2012, when Mitt Romney's campaign failed to develop an effective counter to negative ads (Kantar Media estimates 62% of all spots about Romney were negative). For the whole story, see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/us/politics/in-a-switch-some-campaign-ads-press-the-positive.html

Digital Marketers See Bigger 2014 Election Impact

Digital marketers for both Republicans and Democrats unite on one theme: Digital as a deciding factor in the 2014 midterm elections. A key factor is the declining impact of TV, even though it still gets the lion's share of campaign ad budgets. Al Urbanski, senior editor of Direct Marketing News, recently reported that Targeted Victory, a Republican digital strategy team, and Well & Lighthouse, a Democratic digital support group, had teamed to poll likely voters and found that 29% hadn't even watched television in the previous week! Respondents reported spending an average of just 10.2 hours a week watching video content on TV, compared with 12.1 hours viewing content on alternative channels such as desktops, mobile devices and DVRs. The quoted conclusion of Targeted Victory's co-founder Zac Moffatt, who was the digital director for Mitt Romney's presidential bid: "You can't go into election day with one out of three voters not having seen your message and think you've done your job." Moffatt's strategy is to put more effort into high-end data analytics to deliver segmented, personalized digital messaging, with a tilt toward e-mail over social media since e-mail is a proven fundraising tool, along with direct mail, and is more scalable than social channels when it comes to response, reported Urbanski. For the full story, see http://www.dmnews.com/digital-marketing-prowess-could-sway-midterm-elections/article/341999/

Will Super PACs Outspend Campaigns in Midterms?

Super PACs are on track to outspend political campaigns in terms of ad dollars for the first time in midterm elections. Elizabeth Wilner, senior VP at Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, is quoted by Advertising Age as predicting that "exponentially more" Super PAC money will be spent this year and that, for the first time, Super PACs will outspend campaigns. Kantar Media tallies that, from Jan. 1 to March 25, the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity already has aired 14,624 spots in nine Senate races, and the pro-Democrat Senate Majority PAC has aired 6,061 spots in six of those races. The catalyst for much of the Super PAC spending? Attacks on the Affordable Care Act. As a result, even though there are fewer tight races in expensive broadcast markets and fewer wealthy individual candidates on the campaign trails, broadcast ad spending should still edge up above the midterm spending of 2010, Kantar projects. For more on which races are likely to attract the most ad dollars, read http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/super-pacs-outspend-political-campaigns-midterm/292377/