This recent political season has been full of twists and turns, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. We’re all looking for ways to contextualize this presidential election cycle to keep our heads wrapped around what’s happening. 

A recent analysis by GumGum sheds light on how the media portrays Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump in political discourse. Utilizing their advanced contextual advertising tool, GumGum examined over 5 million pages of political content from late July to uncover trends in media coverage and sentiment. 

The findings reveal a significant disparity between mentions and sentiment: the media mentioned Donald Trump more than 1.7 million times, while Kamala Harris was mentioned around 1.36 million times. Notably, Kamala Harris’s media presence surged by 388% on the day of her candidacy announcement.

We chatted with Hailey Denenberg, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Data at GumGum, to explore these findings and how contextual advertising can help political advertising campaigns.

Leveraging Contextual Analysis for Political Campaigns

Andrew Byrd: Why did GumGum decide to conduct this study? What were your goals, especially in relation to your contextual tool?

Hailey Denenberg: Our contextual technology, developed over the past 15-16 years, uses computer vision and natural language processing to understand content as a human would. With the upcoming political campaign, we wanted to leverage this technology to track trends over time.

Given our extensive programmatic integrations with large platforms like DSPs and SSPs, we have a vast amount of classified content at our disposal. Following Kamala’s presidential announcement, we found it particularly interesting to analyze how the open web and editorial content discussed Kamala versus Trump over the last two weeks in July. We focused on mentions and sentiment, aiming to understand how each candidate is perceived and discussed in content.

Understanding how different editorial voices and platforms perceive and talk about each candidate, especially in terms of sentiment, provides valuable insights into the broader public discourse. Our goal was to use this analysis to uncover trends and patterns in how content about these candidates is produced and consumed, ultimately offering a deeper understanding of the political environment through the lens of digital content.

AB: The upcoming election is full of unexpected developments, especially after Kamala’s recent announcement and the campaign’s strategic execution. Given this dynamic, can you explain how contextual analysis helps understand political coverage?

HD:  Contextual analysis has many applications, especially in presidential campaigns. Advertisers should stay updated on how content is trending, positively or negatively. Think of it as playing offense and defense. For instance, if mentions of Kamala’s opponent, Trump, spike negatively, her campaign can play offense by surrounding that content with positive messaging about Kamala.

On the other hand, they might want to avoid any negative mentions of Kamala to keep the messaging streamlined, which is more of a defensive strategy. Understanding these content trends as different announcements unfold allows campaigns to use advanced contextual targeting. They can target all positive or negative content that mentions specific candidates, leveraging this analysis to shape their messaging effectively.

AB: How can publishers benefit from these technologies?

HD:  Yes, publishers can significantly benefit from contextual technologies. For example, news publishers can strategically package their inventory by grouping positive political news and offering it to brands comfortable with political content but wanting to avoid association with sensitive issues like abortion or immigration. This allows them to monetize content that aligns with the advertiser’s brand safety requirements.

Advanced contextual technologies not only understand the sentiment of the content but can also identify and filter out specific sensitive topics that an advertiser may want to avoid. This capability is crucial for maintaining brand safety while still allowing advertisers to participate in positive, relevant conversations.

Addressing Brand Safety Concerns

AB: At our last conference, there was a significant discussion about brand safety. Advertisers naturally want to avoid being associated with certain content, but publishers face revenue challenges due to these restrictions. How does GumGum approach brand safety, especially in contextual advertising?

HD:  Brand safety has become even more critical recently, especially with the news around the dissolution of VM and GARM. While we align with the GARM framework, we’ve also developed our custom threat categories beyond the usual “Dirty Dozen” like violence.

This is important because while positive contextual targeting aligns with preferred categories, there’s a strong demand for blocking or negatively targeting specific categories. Where GumGum stands out is in video analysis. For instance, in political advertising, which is huge for TV and CTV, most providers struggle to analyze what’s happening within the video content. 

However, our advanced video contextual technology allows us to explore the complete audio transcription and perform scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame analysis. This helps us determine what parts of the video are brand-safe or suitable according to our established threat levels, ensuring more precise targeting and reducing over-blocking.

Reaching the Right Audience and Environment

AB: How does contextual advertising help political ads reach the right audience in the right environment?

HD: At GumGum, we focus on placing ads where they are most relevant, using a deep understanding of content. For example, if someone is reading an article about the election and sees an ad with positive messaging about a candidate like Trump, it aligns with what they’re already thinking about. 

This increases the ad’s effectiveness, especially when combined with geo-targeting in swing states. It’s all about reaching consumers at the moment they’re considering a topic, which can influence their actions.

AB: Does your approach to contextual advertising change depending on whether it’s on mobile, desktop, or other platforms? Or is there generally much overlap?

HD: Generally, there’s significant overlap, as reaching the consumer in the right mindset is often based on the content itself, which tends to be consistent across devices like mobile and desktop. However, attention models can vary depending on the environment. We have different panels for mobile and desktop, and we’re beginning to explore video. While I don’t have definitive data yet, it will be interesting to see if there are differences in optimal attention times across these environments.

AB: What final advice would you give to advertisers and publishers considering political advertising and contextual targeting?

HD: I advise them to gather as much data and insights as possible from various sources. This will help you uncover unconventional ways to position your brand or supply. Instead of sticking to obvious choices, explore new audience segments. For instance, while Nike might seem like a fit for sports content, insights might reveal it’s also popular in Home and Garden content due to a current trend. By broadening your perspective, you can enhance your targeting strategy and reach new audiences more effectively.

The post How Contextual Analysis Shapes Political Campaigns: Insights from GumGum’s Hailey Denenberg appeared first on AdMonsters.

Political advertisers are forecasted to spend over $12 billion across all channels during the 2024 election cycle, marking the highest spend in U.S. history, according to eMarketer. While a significant portion of that budget will go to linear TV, digital advertising remains a critical battleground. 

Election campaigns are turning to advanced techniques like bid shading to stretch their dollars in this high-stakes environment. But what does bid shading mean for publishers? Let’s dig into how this tactic impacts publishers, the challenges it presents, and how to navigate these waters during this unprecedented election cycle.

What is Bid Shading?

Bid shading might sound like some covert operation, but it’s actually a savvy strategy media buyers use in digital ad auctions. Imagine you’re at an auction, but instead of bidding wildly, you have an algorithm whispering the optimal bid in your ear. 

This algorithm analyzes historical pricing data, current market conditions, and the value of the impression to tweak bids just enough to win ad impressions without overpaying. The method is especially crucial in situations like political advertising where budgets, although large, need to be spent efficiently.

Example:

Picture a political campaign aiming to secure an ad slot. Without bid shading, they bid $10 and pay the full amount. But, with bid shading, the algorithm suggests $7.50 based on past data, saving $2.50 while still winning the spot and potentially saving the advertiser 25% on that impression.

The Impact of High Political Budgets on Publishers

With political budgets hitting an all-time high, this influx of ad spend can be both a golden opportunity and a potential headache for publishers. 

The Upside:

1. Increased Demand: More political dollars chasing your inventory means heightened competition, which typically drives up demand and fill rates.
2. Revenue Boost: Those previously unsold ad slots? They’re now hot commodities, filling up quickly and boosting your bottom line.

The Downside:

1. Revenue Volatility: While demand surges, bid shading introduces a layer of unpredictability as bids are adjusted downward, making revenue streams less predictable.
2. Inventory Devaluation: As campaigns use bid shading to cut costs, the perceived value of your ad impressions might take a hit, impacting long-term revenue strategies.

Navigating the Risks of Bid Shading

Bid shading isn’t just a double-edged sword — it’s a whole cutlery set. Here are the risks you need to watch out for and how to handle them:

Lower CPMs:

Bid shading typically results in lower cost-per-thousand impressions (CPMs). Some publishers have reported CPM drops of up to 20% due to bid shading. This is a direct hit to your revenue as bids are systematically adjusted to lower amounts.

What to Do:

Consider implementing dynamic price floors that adapt to market conditions in real time. This ensures bids won’t drop below a certain level, protecting your revenue.

Inconsistent Revenue Streams:

The dynamic nature of bid shading means your revenue from political ads can fluctuate wildly, complicating forecasting and planning.

What to Do: 

Leverage advanced yield management tools to analyze historical data and market trends. This helps you understand and anticipate the effects of bid shading, optimizing your inventory pricing and placement.

Competitive Pressure:

With multiple campaigns vying for ad space, the pressure to lower prices further increases, risking a race to the bottom.

What to Do:

Enhance your auction strategies with techniques like header bidding. By involving multiple demand sources, you can drive up competition for your inventory, balancing out the downward pressure from bid shading.

Making Bid Shading Work for You

Bid shading isn’t all doom and gloom—there’s a silver lining if you play your cards right. Here’s how to turn bid shading into an advantage:

Leverage Advanced Analytics: 

Investing in tools that provide deep insights into bidding patterns can help publishers adjust their strategies in real time and identify opportunities to maximize revenue.

Enhance First-Party Data: 

Rich, accurate data about audience segments can command premium prices, even in a bid-shaded environment. Investing in data collection and analysis can increase the value proposition for advertisers.

Dynamic Price Floors:

Setting smart, dynamic price floors can help you maintain control over your inventory pricing. Adjust these floors based on real-time market conditions, like time of day, user demographics, and current events to prevent your CPMs from dropping too low.

Auction Strategies:

Don’t just rely on traditional auction setups. Incorporate header bidding to get multiple demand sources competing for your ad space. Increase competition for inventory and mitigate the impact of bid shading from any single source by relying on multiple SSPs and ad exchanges. This improves the likelihood of higher bids, even with bid shading in play. 

Yield Management:

Invest in robust yield management tools and expertise. These tools help you make data-driven decisions about your ad inventory, optimizing pricing and placement to counteract the effects of bid shading.

Collaboration with Buyers:

Build strong relationships with your advertisers. Educate them about the value of your premium inventory and work together to establish fair pricing and bidding practices. This collaborative approach can lead to more stable and beneficial outcomes for both parties.

When in Rome Leverage Bid Shading to Your Advantage

Bid shading is here to stay, especially in high-budget political advertising cycles. Publishers who adapt and strategically manage their ad inventory can thrive, capturing the full potential of these high-budget opportunities.

While bid shading presents both opportunities and challenges, strategic measures can mitigate risks and maximize revenue. Implementing dynamic pricing, enhancing auction strategies, optimizing yield management, and fostering collaboration with buyers is key to navigating bid shading complexities and staying competitive.

Not all of the predicted $12 billion election cycle budgets will be subject to bid shading. Direct deals, bypassing programmatic auctions, will also play a significant role. Publishers offering unique value propositions, like highly engaged audiences or brand-safe environments, can command premium prices despite bid shading tactics.

The post How Bid Shading and the $12 Billion Political Ad Boom Could Impact Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

In an era where technology shapes our daily lives, generative AI has emerged as a powerful force in the political landscape, and its role is both revolutionary and potentially dangerous.

With generative AI, politicians can create targeted campaign ads, amplify campaign messages, and engage voters, but there’s a downside. Consider how AI can also be misused for creating convincingly fake campaign ads, disseminating disinformation, and turning voter outreach into voter manipulation.

Dive in as Dinesen delves into the complex world of AI in politics, examining its benefits, risks, and the urgent need for regulation to protect the integrity of democratic processes.

Generative AI and Politics

OpenAI certainly changed the world in November 2022 when it introduced ChatGPT, the first popular and widely available generative AI tool. Public reaction was varied. Many warned it was the end of numerous careers (indeed, the Hollywood writers’ strike was partially due to fear that ChatGPT would eliminate their jobs).

And a great many experts worried that ChatGPT would usher in a new era of fake news, disinformation, and more believable scams as generative AI can create text that feels legitimate to the average person. This isn’t an idle fear as one study found that large language models (LLMs) can outperform human authors in terms of convincing people.

Election officials are sounding the alarm over the use of generative AI in creating political ads, phony but convincing campaign fundraising letters, as well as orchestrating voter outreach initiatives. These officials weren’t wrong; we’ve already seen generative AI used for such purposes. In January 2024, registered Democratic voters in New Hampshire received fake Joe Biden robocalls telling them not to vote in the primaries so that they could save their vote for November.

This is not to say that all use cases for generative AI in the political sphere are nefarious. Many legitimate political parties and candidates see generative AI as a useful tool in amplifying the impact of their political ads. For instance, they can use it to deliver highly targeted ads at the household level, including those encouraging voter turnout. In fact, generative AI can help less-resourced campaigns compete against well-funded ones.

That said, generative AI can (and likely will) have harmful impacts on elections across the world, and it’s well worth our time to be aware of its dangers, and take steps to mitigate them.

Insufficient Oversight in AI-Generated Political Ads

There’s no doubt that AI can create high-quality text that many people and voters find quite credible. But therein lies the danger. 

Most reasonable people assume that the ads they hear or see have been endorsed by a campaign and vetted by the media source that runs them. In the US, radio and television ads end with the candidate saying, “I’m [candidate name] and I approve this message.” Internet-based ads are exempt from this disclosure requirement, a loophole that the Honest Ads Act of 2017 sought to close (it didn’t pass).

Today, few regulations require political ads to disclose the role of AI in their creation. The one exception is the EU AI Act, which classifies AI systems used to influence voters in political campaigns as “high-risk” and therefore subject to strict regulations.

The United States government has failed to enact a national AI disclosure law, even as the 2024 presidential election looms. In the absence of a national law, a dozen or so states enacted laws regulating the use of AI and deepfakes (more on that later) in political advertising and requiring disclosure. Those states are California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. Additionally, Google said last year it would require AI disclosure on political ads, and Meta soon followed suit.  

But there are challenges to these efforts. Common Cause, an advocacy group focused on promoting ethics, accountability, and reform in government and politics, says the Florida law is too weak to be effective as it imposes fines, but no mechanisms for removing offending ads. In Wisconsin, the Voting Rights Lab warns that the state law is too narrow, regulating only candidate campaigns and not special interest group ads.

The bigger challenge is that it’s up to the ad creators to self-disclose, an unlikely event for people bent on fear-mongering, and even if an ad is deemed violative, it will still be in circulation for it is spotted and identified. In other words, AI-generated ads with misinformation will still have ample opportunities to be seen and believed by a great many voters.    

Generative AI Hallucinations

Another challenge is AI hallucinations. Most AI tools warn the user that responses may contain incorrect information (see graphic below), which means a campaign may willingly or inadvertently create campaign ads containing false information.

This isn’t a theoretical concern. Research from a European non-profit organization, AI Forensics, found that one out of three answers provided by AI was wrong. Microsoft’s Bing search bot gave wrong answers when asked basic questions about elections in Germany and Switzerland, often misquoting its sources.

In the United States, misleading and incorrect responses from chatbots threaten to disenfranchise voters. AI-generated responses told users to vote at locations that don’t exist or aren’t official polling stations. Columbia University tested five AI models, and all failed to provide accurate responses to basic questions about the democratic process.

In the U.S., misinformation about voting times and locations is a tried-and-true voting suppression tactic, so it’s concerning that generative AI will allow its practitioners to be more effective.

Inherent Bias of Generative AI

All AI is trained on data; the accuracy of the AI is wholly driven by how well the training data is vetted and labeled. Data is often inherently biased for many reasons. In the political sphere, LLMs are trained on news stories that concern elections and candidates, but liberal news sites block AI bots as a matter of course, whereas right-wing ones welcome them. The result is that the AI models are trained on data skewed to a particular point of view that may not reflect a total body of opinion. 

Going further, some people intentionally seek to influence the responses of a chatbot. In 2023, The New York Times reported that David Rozado, a researcher in New Zealand, used prompt engineering to create right-wing ChatGPT. This revised chatbot was intentionally designed to give right-wing answers

Political Manipulation

Perhaps the biggest concern is that AI will be used to manipulate the voter, as the fake Biden robocalls sought to do.

This isn’t a new fear, of course, as we’ve seen AI used in political manipulation long before the widespread availability of ChatGPT. For instance, in the 2018 midterm elections in the US, election officials were warning voters to be aware of deep fakes. To raise awareness of just how realistic deep fake videos can seem, Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele created a video in which a fake Barack Obama says “stay woke.” The message is clear: don’t believe what you hear on the internet.

Despite the warning, deep fake videos and images appear in the media.  In June 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign shared fake AI-generated images depicting Donald Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and someone who Trump came to loathe. Trump supporters targeted African Americans with fake AI images, as part of a strategic ploy to convince voters that Trump is popular among Black voters.

Deep fakes also played a key role in the 2023 Argentine elections. Candidate Sergio Massa’s team created a video featuring his main rival, Javier Milei, describing the revenues that could be gained by selling human organs and suggesting that parents could consider having children as a “long-term investment.” Despite the video’s explicit AI-generated label, it was quickly shared on different platforms without disclaimers.

Over in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s staff shared a video depicting his main rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, receiving the endorsement of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a designated terrorist group. Although this video was clearly fabricated, it didn’t stop voters from viewing and sharing it widely. 

Given what we’ve already seen occur, it’s no surprise that election experts call generative AI a “political super-weapon.” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, takes it one step further, saying that AI poses “epoch-defining” risks, including the widespread proliferation of disinformation.

When People Aren’t Real: The Rise of Bots & Psychochats

There’s one final threat to consider: AI posing as humans to sway how people think and ultimately vote. Once again, nefarious players have access to sophisticated tools to help them deploy their schemes.

For instance, bots have been effective at disseminating disinformation with a great deal of speed and efficiency. In 2019, The New York Times reported that Epoch Media Group created over 600 fake media profiles, all featuring profile photos generated by AI. Those profiles were then deployed to distribute fake news and disinformation.

It’s not that hard to come up with AI-generated profile pics; a simple Google search serves up numerous sites allowing you to create realistic headshots and photos for social media. These bots can then be used to engage with voters who may be on the fence or provide people, who are intent on voting, to go to a non-existent polling station.

Psychochats goe one step further. These are avatars of candidates and are deployed online to interact with potential voters. It’s only a matter of time before psychochats are used by campaign opponents to spread misinformation on their rivals, similar to Sergio Massa’s smear campaign against Javier Milei.

Think this is too outlandish to be true? Politico reports that Meta is already experimenting with licensed AI celebrity avatars. And, Hello History invites users to “have in-depth conversations” with historical people of the past.

Democracy in Peril: Why We Must Act

When elections are marked by rampant misinformation, the very foundation of democracy is compromised. At the end of the day, misinformation leads to the formation of governments formed under false pretenses. Chaos results when governments lack the necessary legitimacy to govern effectively. 

The erosion of trust brought on by deep fakes, AI-generated lies, and psychochats undermine the democratic process, ultimately threatening the stability of societies. Never has it been more important to protect the integrity of information during election cycles. AI tools are cool and offer tremendous benefits to everyone in the digital media industry. But we must also acknowledge their potential for abuse, and work tirelessly to control how they’re used.

The post AI’s Role in Political Manipulation appeared first on AdMonsters.

Many marketers are – let’s say – generally excited about the promised targeting power of CTV. 

Yet, for political advertisers, many are staking their careers on this burgeoning new medium.

Indeed, candidates can’t wait for CTV to sort out all of its fundamentals in the near future. They can’t set aside some ‘test and learn’ budgets while hoping that all the targeting tools, identifiers, and post-cookie offerings that CTV has dangled — producing the ultimate combination of precision targeting and big screen branding — get put in place.

Rather, politicians have a high-stakes race to run now. And if they lose – they don’t just slip behind in market share. Their brand goes out of business (for four years at least).

The stakes don’t get higher than a race for the White House. But, because the 2024 races should also provide the ultimate test case for this still unfinished medium, the stakes couldn’t be much higher for the business of television advertising either. 

Whether CTV ad targeting can deliver on its campaign promises in 2024 will have huge ramifications for the industry.

What CTV Needs To Prove To Persuade the 2024 Vote

Given the macro shifts in media consumption, political candidates – typically among those without the larger media budgets-  cannot afford to lean on linear-TV-centric playbooks of the past. Today’s voters are ‘Streaming.’ 

However, CTV still needs to prove it can influence voter behavior and election outcomes this year. The good news is that thanks to the adoption of ad-supported tiers by many top streaming services and the expanded availability of FAST platforms, there is far more CTV ad inventory and reach available to political advertisers than just a few years ago.

More importantly, CTV is uniquely equipped to drive tangible outcomes that candidates care about (besides votes on election day), such as site visits, sign-ups, and donations. Increasingly, a new crop of researchers and ad technology companies can tie TV exposure to spikes in web searches, mobile downloads, and transactions.

The key will be for CTV’s targeting capabilities to come through by reaching the right, ideally persuadable, swing voters. That means hitting crucial voting segments in the right neighborhoods or clusters of DMA’s to push voters to the polls.

In addition, CTV will be crucial for connecting with the hard-to-reach yet highly influential Gen Z voters, most of whom are streaming-first, cord-TV viewers. The same can be said for underserved minority voters, who are likely to consume niche streaming content. 

Considering the ability of these groups to potentially sway this election, it’s fair to ask — can politicians holistically impact all necessary groups across the CTV ecosystem, both in reach and investment? 

Is It the Creative? 

The CTV ad tactic that could have the most impact on political campaigns this year is its long-touted ability to deliver a wide range of different TV ads to different target constituents. This kind of creative variation in CTV has been chiefly theoretical, as many brands continue to run their general TV spots in streaming environments. 

However, given the issue-driven nature of their campaigns, political advertisers can and should take advantage of this opportunity by delivering unique messages – tied to specific causes – to distinct audiences in a very nuanced way.

To help, there are also more impactful creative options in CTV vs. traditional linear, such as QR codes, picture-in-picture units, and other interactive strategies that can be used to achieve performance results among a range of constituencies. 

Politics – And CTV – Are Not for the Faint of Heart

Of course, given that the CTV advertising ecosystem is still in its infancy, candidates who decide to spend aggressively on this vehicle face plenty of potential pitfalls.

Brand safety is of utmost importance for many marketers, yet they are still working through protection mechanisms and technologies common to digital advertising in CTV. If an unwelcome ad adjacency is a nightmare for the average CMO, it could prove fatal to the wrong political campaign.

Plus, this time, campaign managers have to worry about not just keeping their messages away from unsavory or inappropriate content – but also the inevitable rise in misinformation, thanks mainly to the increased adoption of generative AI.

The more that the ‘bad guys’ figure out how to exploit this tech to spread falsehoods, the more that social media platforms, in particular, will have to fight an arms race while trying to keep candidates out of trouble. 

As a result, CTV has an opportunity to provide a more regulated environment – as long as streaming platforms and their ad tech partners can create reliable safeguards.

The Race (For Media Supremacy) Is On

Just as the pandemic accelerated many shifts in consumer behavior and subsequent advertising strategies, this year’s highly contested election could serve to pour jet fuel on an already red hot medium – or a bucket of cold water. Candidates essentially have no choice but to dive right in and make a big bet on the medium’s supposed unmatched set of capabilities. How that bet goes could sway many future advertisers to quickly look to emulate the 2024 winners’ CTV ad tactics – or to put on the brakes. It’s incumbent on the industry as a whole to execute and deliver. Whichever candidates win, if CTV is considered key to their success – the entire medium should soar.

The post Why CTV May Decide Who Wins the White House – and the Fate of the Medium appeared first on AdMonsters.

Will CTV pick the next president?

Political analysts often talk about the importance of a candidate’s ground game. In 2024, the winning candidates may determine who has the best streaming game. Indeed, as 2024 approaches–and portends some of the most intense races in US elections history– connected TV promises to play a pivotal, perhaps even deciding role. 

That is if campaign strategists–and the cadres of ad-buying specialists they typically deploy–recognize the opportunity before them and are willing to throw away convention.

To win in 2024, political advertisers must prepare to rethink decades’ worth of proven strategies while maximizing their data assets to take advantage of the television’s fast-evolving, advanced targeting capabilities.

A Very Conservative Couple of Parties

Historically, political campaigns–particularly presidential ones–have stuck with a tried and true playbook for getting out the vote. Unlike traditional brands, this isn’t an area where you can afford to ‘test and learn. After all, if a campaign’s media buying strategy doesn’t pan out, it doesn’t just lead to a bad quarter–but the brand in question suddenly goes out of business.

Therefore, media conservatism reigns for both sides of the aisle.

Many recent candidates have embraced digital platforms (remember Bernie Sanders on Snapchat?) — they centered a large portion of this activity around collecting names and fundraising. While President Joe Biden and former President Trump spent $360 million on Facebook and Google in 2020, the two candidates doled out a stunning $1 billion on TV ads in just 13 states, reported NPR. As has long been the case, they focused most of that spending on linear TV, particularly local TV stations in critical districts.

Of course, we know that 2020 was already a long time ago in media time. Over the past few years, the TV terrain has changed radically. For example:

• Cord cutting has accelerated; per Nielsen, cable TV viewership now accounts for just 30% of TV viewing.
• Video viewership has quickly shifted to streaming and social video.
• A new generation of viewers has never had cable and consumes TV with a streaming-first mentality; for the first time this past summer, streaming accounted for most of TV consumption.

Here’s the hard and scary truth for political and traditionalists–given the confluence of these consumer behavioral shifts, a sizable portion of the electorate is simply unreachable through classic political advertising tactics.

Deciding to ignore a significant pool of potential voters, well, that’s not a winning strategy.

The CTV Election

If 2020 seemed like a particularly intense race, wait. Experts predict political brands will dole out a record $10 billion in the US in 2024.

Yet, there is a risk that many of those dollars might go to waste if political operatives don’t fully embrace and master CTV.

Thankfully, the recent growth in ad-supported streaming provides political spenders far more options. Not only have top services such as Max, Netflix, and Disney+ recently rolled out ad-supported options for consumers, but many of these companies are cracking down on password sharing while offering pricing plans that encourage new users to opt for advertising. 

Plus, the growth in free ad-supported services (the FAST category) continues to impress. There are many more outlets for political spenders to recapture much of linear TV’s lost reach.

However, that’s only part of the story. So many more options are available today for candidates to use their TV dollars more strategically. Streaming platforms have positioned themselves to offer political advertisers an edge, enabling them to tailor their messages with unmatched precision. 

Several campaigns saw CTV success in the 2022 midterms as they moved away from cookie-based tactics. Those advancements should only continue. For instance, most major streaming platforms have partnered with clean room tech firms, which should enable political campaigns to use their existing email databases to target interested votes.

In addition, during CTV campaigns, these candidates should be able to derive deeper insights from granular user data, allowing them to make adjustments mid-flight. Overall, CTV should offer a sharper targeting edge compared to linear platforms.

Yet, given these advertisers’ media buying experience, maximizing the CTV opportunity won’t happen by flipping a switch. Now is the time for political brands to take the steps needed to become masters of CTV ad targeting.

That means ensuring they make the best use of their data via the right technology and partners. They’ll need new talent and processes to optimize campaigns with speed and agility.

They’ll also need to start evaluating and pressure testing vehicles like data clean rooms and new forms of addressable CTV advertising today.

At the same time, the streamers have a job to do to capture what should be a potential 2024 windfall. Media companies must craft products and services to cater to these somewhat novice brands. Political campaigns may need training, customized tools, and tailored research. They need reliable attribution systems, as every dollar and vote counts.

The Race Is On

The 2024 political season, particularly the presidential race, will be more competitive and likely more volatile than ever. As we’ve seen in several local battles, a handful of votes can determine the difference between winning and losing, so every potential voter reached will be essential.

Therefore, the political ad teams that reorient their media focus on the need to go after those ‘unreachable voters,’ with as much targeting sophistication as possible, will be the ones that prove to be winners on Election Day.

The post The Uncharted Terrain: Political Advertising in 2024’s Streaming Ecosystem appeared first on AdMonsters.

All of this media attention, and the volume of campaign messaging coming through ad channels, makes the political programmatic advertising space a really interesting one to watch right now. To get a fuller sense of the nuances of political programmatic, and both the complexities and the benefits of playing in that space, I reached out to Eli Kaplan. As a Founding Partner of digital ad agency Rising Tide Interactive, Kaplan works closely with political campaigns, nonprofits and advocacy groups. He’s also the Chief Strategist for programmatic buying shop DSPolitical, which he described as a “sister company” to Rising Tide and a “joint venture” with data firm Catalyst. At OPS on June 7 in New York City, Kaplan will be talking about ad tech’s very compelling role in the 2016 election, but in the interim, AdMonsters wanted to take a minute to ask what Rising Tide and other political programmatic players have been working on and why it matters.

BRIAN LaRUE: How much of a challenge it is target and schedule political programmatic buys in certain geographical areas, when demand can change so quickly?

ELI KAPLAN: If you’re trying to do a direct buy in a relatively small geographical area—an inefficient media market, a state House race, or something like that—an individual publisher isn’t going to have enough scale for a direct buy to even be worth the time. The programmatic space was designed to fix that problem. But as you noted, the flip side of that is it can be difficult to estimate the number of impressions you’re going to be able to serve in a specific geography and timeframe.

We work on enough DSPs to have the ability to turn levers and get additional scale when we need. I’d prefer to deliver in full than to leave a little extra money on the table. The nightmare scenario in politics is that you lose a close election by a very small number of votes, and have to go back to the client and say, “We have all this money that we actually weren’t able to spend, and if we did, maybe you would have won.”

BL: To that end, what are some of the other major challenges you face—especially challenges brands might not face in programmatic?

EK: The ability to have performance metrics that are meaningful in real time in a persuasion campaign is very difficult, compared to what you’re able to do with a constant feedback loop of conversion data. When we’re doing fundraising or acquisition campaigns, we have that feedback loop and can optimize very quickly. What we’ve seen, based on a variety of studies, is that the click-through rate has very little correlation to the effectiveness of a persuasion campaign. We get polling results back every so often, but obviously those polls reflect what’s going on in TV, in earned media, and in mail. It’s often very difficult to parse out the digital element.

BL: To get back to available inventory, what might publishers do to make inventory available and price it to their best advantage?

EK: So many people don’t vote, and so many are completely set in their ways, with no chance of persuading them. Enabling buyers to book first-party data against impressions is very important. There’s such a premium placed on data and audience targeting in the political space. You can have really powerful, high-impact inventory, and if you’re not giving buyers a mechanism to line that inventory up with the people who matter, you are losing out on political dollars.

BL: I’d seen a little about how scarcity of inventory can be a challenge in political programmatic, because of, for example, the environments buyers want to or don’t want to appear in. To what degree is scarcity really a problem?

EK: It really depends on the state. You have a bunch of states this cycle—I can’t think of a better example than New Hampshire—where you have a competitive presidential election, a competitive governor’s election, a competitive US Senate election, and a state that’s not particularly efficient for television. Inventory’s going to be very, very tight. In states that aren’t competitive in the presidential contest, I think it’ll be very easy to get high-impact pre-roll inventory in a programmatic media environment.

BL: In terms of the inventory you’re seeing, how are things different in this election cycle than in 2014 or 2012?

EK: In 2012, there were not a lot of tools that made it easy for a relatively unsophisticated buyer to purchase programmatic media, especially video. But, if you knew what you were doing, 2012 was actually a pretty good year—there were a lot of places where you could be ahead of the game.

In 2014, there was a lot of video—and there was also a lot of fraud. We place a premium on first-party data, for a lot of reasons. Avoiding fraud is one of them. If you have a list of likely persuadable voters in a particular election, and you’re matching them to cookies, it is very difficult for a bot to pretend to be Eli Kaplan, who lives at a particular address. It’s very easy for a bot to pretend to be male between the ages of 30 and 40. The industry’s gotten a lot better at cracking down on fraud since 2014, and I think that’s good for everyone in the long run.

Obviously because there was no presidential election in 2014, there was a lot less spending. If you’re in one of these states that’s competitive on the presidential level, it’s going to be tougher this time to find inventory.

BL: What kind of new opportunities and challenges have come up in video, and how are you navigating that?

EK: This is so new to clients that there’s a lot of education that needs to get done. Video is similar to the TV format political campaigns are used to. But on platforms such as Facebook, you don’t actually have to sit through the video and listen to the sound in order to get to your content. It requires difficult conversations with clients about why it’s a much better deal to buy inventory that costs more. So many publishers are putting video inventory out there that is not what you would traditionally think of as a high-impact pre-roll video commercial.

BL: I’m curious what publishers can do to work with demand partners in the political programmatic space to make things more efficient and to find more value.

EK: Well, I’d think if you’re a publisher, you probably want to sell direct as often as possible because you get a higher margin. But truthfully, at least in politics, you have to make your inventory available to book first-party data against it at scale. In practice, individual publishers probably aren’t going to have enough inventory booked against first-party data segments to be worth salespeople’s time. To get the scale of likely voting ticket-splitters in a particular geography that I need to talk to , I would need to aggregate hundreds of publishers.

BL: What’s the role of private marketplaces in this election cycle? It seems like they might offer some solutions to some of the pain points you’ve mentioned. Plus private marketplaces are generally more mature than they were even in 2014.

EK: You can get better inventory. You can book first-party data against it. If you’re in one of these states where there’s a lot of demand for video inventory and you’re just looking for everything on the open exchange, there’s not a lot of great stuff out there. And, if you’re going publisher direct, you lose a lot of the targeting you need for your buy to be effective. We’re a big believer in these private marketplaces and we think they’re going to play an enormous role in the 2016 cycle.

The post Pulling the Lever on Political Programmatic: A Conversation With OPS Speaker Eli Kaplan of Rising Tide Interactive appeared first on AdMonsters.