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/