News organizations expect connected TV and out-of-home digital to play a larger role in future elections and politics. This is especially true for smaller media outlets that cover many of the less visible races in the crowded political field.
Many media agencies looking to reduce political ad spend in this key election year are turning to CTV and DOOH as additional ways to engage with voters and viewers. Interestingly, it is these media outlets that further facilitate political investment through programmatic means.
In some cases, this allows smaller independents to fuel local campaigns and make data more widely available, said Jonathan Burns, principal at Population Science, an agency focused on programmatic in politics. He said that there will be more opportunities to utilize it.
“Since the last cycle, more things have been programmed. [the presidential election]” Burns said.
According to Statista, the U.S. political advertising landscape is expected to surpass record spending levels in 2024, especially in light of the upcoming presidential election, with political ad spending expected to be around $15 billion to $16 billion. It is expected.
Collaboration between CTV and DOOH
As digital advertising options continue to expand, platforms are working closely with media agencies to navigate the walled garden of political ad spending this year. Mike Hauptman, founder and CEO of his AdLib Media Group, a programmatic media buying platform spun out of MediaMath, works with agencies and advertisers such as Population Science.
For DOOH in particular, Hauptmann explained, targeting and access has improved, allowing advertisers to make selections on a screen-by-screen basis and even by intersections, such as specific bus stops.
“There has been a dramatic shift in addressability and supply since the last election cycle,” he said. “If it’s working and there he’s inserting a QR code and measuring the number of people who visit the campaign page, or even if he has some kind of vanity URL, the effectiveness and functionality You can measure the area where… [so you can] Just like entering more budget on Facebook, your spending will automatically increase in real time. ”
Burns also said CTV allows customers to spend more nimbly and strategically. Despite billions of dollars in expected spending, many campaigns don’t have the budget to “basically throw it at the wall,” he explained.
“It’s very important to them [local] Campaigns (in fact, most campaigns out there are about agile spending) [and] They’re going to be targeted for spending,” Burns told Digiday. With microtargeting, “CTV can target exactly the people you want to reach. 90% of people are streaming some content.”
Kelly Rawlinson, director of client leadership at cloud, a full-service digital agency, said data shows that in competitive regions, video content through YouTube and CTV “typically accounts for the majority of digital media spend. I agree that it is.
“DOOH and CTV in general are becoming more and more popular, and with important elections around the corner, there is no reason they can’t be used at a high rate for political campaigns,” Rolinson added. “Real-time performance metrics show that digital media spending has a significant impact on election outcomes.”
It remains to be seen whether CTV or DOOH will do better in increasing their share of political ad spending. Mr Burns said he thought both amounts would rise “significantly”, adding: “Part of that is due to downstream effects that we don’t have control over in terms of funding by the political parties. That being said, But I expect a significant increase, and so do I.” Some of the money spent during the primary season is already starting to pay off. ”
David Algranati, chief innovation officer at comScore, said recent CTV research shows that rural areas of the U.S. actually have more CTV viewers than urban areas. “This is a high indicator, which seems counterintuitive,” he said. Creating a rural index without taking these into account can lead to misallocation. ”
Brand safety measures
Rolinson said the trend also reflects the need for agencies to step up their brand safety measures during key political seasons. This is especially true for intense news coverage and sensitive social issues following debates and events.
“If a brand doesn’t want to appear in areas with a lot of political coverage, there are steps agencies can take to redirect spending to other channels that minimize political coverage,” Rolinson said. . “Apart from strict brand safety measures, we will be conducting real-time audits on emerging trends to enhance campaign keywords, targeting and blocklists.”
While some media agencies say they’ve seen minimal budget changes across channels so far, a big focus for clients this season is to “reduce spending on specific channels.” “It’s not going to be about avoidance or minimization, it’s about brand safety and suitability,” said Marcy Greenberger, chief investment officer. At U.M.
In particular, Greenberger said, “advertisers will seek to limit exposure and adjacency to certain content within a channel.” Some advertisers are more risk-averse and want to avoid running ads related to political debate.
CTV and DOOH tend to avoid news-related content (unless they’re streaming news services), so the outlets hope to get a bigger slice of the political advertising pie by the end of November.
