Digital political advertising has been one of the most powerful tools candidates and campaigns can use to effectively talk to voters.
A lot of changes have come to it in recent weeks, and more may be on the horizon.
Many industry experts expect Facebook to follow in the footsteps of Twitter and Google soon.
Let’s start at the beginning.
What Has Changed
Twitter has banned all political and issue advertising, but Twitter’s ban doesn’t really create a dramatic effect on campaigns heading into 2020. Read why here.
Google has removed audience targeting capabilities for display, search and YouTube. These targeting methods are leaving Google/YouTube:
x No Voter Files or ‘Micro-targeting’
x No Political Affiliation Targeting (i.e. ‘Likely Republicans’)
x No Remarketing to Website Visitors (Ads that appear to follow you around the web)
x No Specific Placement Lists of Websites or Apps
What Hasn’t Changed
Campaigns will continue to be able to use these targeting methods on Google/YouTube:
Demographic: Targeting individuals by Age, Gender and Household income.
Geographic: Targeting individuals by location with zip code granularity.
Contextual: Targeting by the content of the website, app or YouTube channel.
What Those Changes Mean for 2020 Campaigns
What hasn’t changed is the fact that campaigns cannot rely on any one single medium or platform to reach their audience of targeted voters.
2020 campaigns need an omni-channel solution that delivers the right message at the right time to the right people.
Programmatic advertising is not impacted by these recent changes and restrictions; for the record, neither is direct mail.
Through programmatic advertising, campaigns can continue audience targeting and microtargeting with display and video advertisements.
Majority Strategies is the industry leader in programmatic advertising targeting voter files. In both academic and real-world tests, our solution has been proven to drive message recall among specific lists of voters.
These ads appear on mobile, desktop, as well as Over the Top and Connected TV devices (OTT/CTV). By combining multiple platforms, you can increase the number of times voters see your message, which results in better recall of the messaging.
So while many changes have come to digital advertising, some things still stay the same.
Campaigns still have the ability to talk to voters on a one-to-one basis.
Get started with our team of state and national strategists today.