Campaigns Must Go Beyond First-Party Voter Data

Political campaigns in 2016 are challenged as never before to go beyond first-party voter data in their digital outreach, points out a recent AdExchanger.com post. Peter Pasi, vice president of political sales at the digital ad agency Collective, notes that Borrell Associates has predicted candidates will be spending $1 billion on political digital ads ahead of the 2016 election, a huge jump from the $159 million spent in 2012. A lot of those dollars will be absorbed by programmatic advertising, which replaces human ad management with programmed ad buying and placement based on targeting data and real-time bidding. That requires digging a lot deeper into the data to avoid wasting impressions, and dollars, on generic voter campaigns, Pasi argues. Why won't basic voter data do the job? Because political advertising needs to focus on a finite audience of eligible voters actually likely to go to the polls and back the candidate or cause. Remember that only half of eligible voters actually show up to vote and many of those are not persuadable, Pasi points out. Plus, if 2016 proves anything, it is that polarizing candidates can overturn the usual assumptions about voter support. Luckily, campaigns can now use targeting data that goes beyond the static modeling by age/income/ethnicity/party affiliation of the past. They can optimize ad-targeting with real-time polling results, ID calls, field work, e-mail and direct mail responses, set-top TV data, and offline purchase and interest behavior. A lot can be gleaned about voters from what they read, view, share and buy. For example, targeting new mothers might help a candidate with a strong platform on child care or child tax credits, while identifying hunters can be crucial for campaigns focused on gun control and related issues, notes Pasi. And in today's volatile races, access to real-time data is key to adjusting and optimizing messaging and targeting. For more: http://adexchanger.com/politics/to-reach-likely-voters-political-advertisers-must-move-beyond-first-party-data/

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

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

Data-Fueled Targeting Is Redefining TV Political Ads

Data-centric political ad targeting -- which transformed digital politicking -- began redefining TV ad campaigns in 2013. Traditionally, political campaigns buy TV spots based on ratings data, such as the demographics of the core viewers of a show. Now, by combining voter data with set-top box data, campaigns can better segment TV audience voters. Firms are sprouting up to serve the new age of voter-data-fueled TV, especially since TV buys take the lion's share of political ad budgets. A recent Ad Age article surveyed some in the forefront of TV targeting, including Rentrak, a firm that provides local and national TV data on 12 million households from its partners in cable, satellite and telecom, and which worked with the Obama for America campaign last year. Rentrak claims it actually did more political business in 2013 with just a handful of gubernatorial, mayoral and down-ballot races. Using an outside firm (Experian in 2013), Rentrak matched TV-subscriber data to voter-file data from the campaigns and their parties to produce anonymized audience segments that categorize voters according to interests, likelihood to vote and political leanings. An example of the new trend in TV ad buying: Democrat Terry McAuliffe's winning Virginia gubernatorial effort spent around 25% of its persuasion-ad budget (ads intended to sway voters rather than generate fundraising) on ads targeted via voter-file matching and purchased through exchanges and automated TV-buying platforms, as opposed to ads with traditional behavioral or demographic targeting. For more, see http://adage.com/article/news/data-redefining-political-tv-ads/245286/