In this article…
Political advertising has advanced significantly in recent decades. Historically, campaigns had limited options for where they could advertise, and those channels had limited inventory. Political campaigns primarily relied on radio, print, and linear TV to reach voters, using mass marketing strategies to appeal broadly to unspecified audiences. These mediums had limited targeting capabilities and provided few data insights. However, this has all changed thanks to the rise of technology and changing media consumption habits.
With the advent of the internet and the emergence of various digital channels, political campaigns now have more inventory and options for getting their message out there, including connected TV (CTV) — a subset of advanced TV that has become a predominant channel for digital ad spend. CTV is the fastest-growing medium for political ads, with the upcoming 2024 election expected to see $1.5 billion in CTV marketing ad spend (nearly half of all political digital advertising dollars!). CTV’s share of political ad spending is set to jump from 2.7% in 2020 to 12.8% this year. The Harris campaign is leading the charge, allocating $200 million for digital ads, much of which will go to streaming platforms.
CTV advertising promises to be an effective method for political campaigns trying to reach voters with personalized content in 2024. Let’s look at CTV political ads a little closer and overview the implications for your political campaign.
The growth of CTV in political advertising
CTV has become central to political ad strategies in helping campaigns gain exposure through targeted, personalized ad experiences to specific audience segments based on demographics, behaviors, and interests. With CTV advertising, political campaigns have become more adaptable to changing viewer preferences and can ensure their messages resonate with diverse audiences across digital platforms. This strategy represents a critical opportunity for political campaigns to tap into the growing viewership of streaming and adjust their marketing plans to meet voters where they spend their time.
Although traditional broadcast TV remains at the forefront of political advertising, recent increases in CTV political ad spending in 2024 reflect shifting media consumption preferences toward streaming services. Today, the average American adult spends almost 2 hours per day on CTV devices. It’s worth noting that CTV has the most significant audience share with Millennials, which makes CTV an especially worthy investment for targeting the younger generations whose voting habits aren’t as established yet.
2024 political ad spending
Compared to the previous U.S. presidential election year in 2020, campaigns and interest groups are expected to increase their political ad spending promoting causes and candidates by almost a third in 2024, totaling approximately $12.32 billion, according to Reuters. This is said to encompass all advertising for federal, state, and local politics, including lobbying and election activities.
While traditional media still dominates political ad spending, digital platforms are growing, with 45% of digital ad spending projected to be allocated to CTV for its refined targeting capabilities and increased inventory in this election cycle. For reference, only 19% of digital political ad spend went to CTV in 2020.
While the presidential election tends to garner the most attention among voters, it’s essential to note that political ad spending goes well beyond the big race; over 500 seats are up for election in 2024. Down-ballot races and issues in state and local elections will significantly impact where ad dollars are allocated.
Experian’s relevant ballot initiative audiences
If you’re looking to reach voters based on their attitudes and behaviors around crucial ballot measures, Experian offers over 240 politically relevant audiences that can help. Our consumer behavior and interest audiences can fine-tune your targeting for local and national ballot initiatives if, for example, you were targeting military families who favor initiatives supporting veterans or households with children interested in supporting school funding. This precise targeting ensures your political ads reach the most receptive audiences and maximizes the impact of your ad spend.
Third-party cookie deprecation and CTV
The phase-out of third-party cookies has created a challenge for political campaigns relying on digital advertising strategies. In the past, political advertisers have used cookies to track a user’s web activity to understand their browsing behaviors across sites and create detailed profiles for targeting purposes. However, due to recent changes in online privacy regulations, third-party cookies are going away.
Political advertisers have recognized the need for innovation and are exploring new avenues for effectively reaching target audiences without third-party cookies. CTV has arisen as a promising solution, as it doesn’t rely on these cookies to paint a picture of audiences and offers an alternative for precise, privacy-compliant targeting and ad spend optimization. CTV publishers tend to know quite a bit about audiences, including their viewing habits, location, preferred CTV devices, and more — and utilizing this information can give your campaign deeper, more accurate data without invading user privacy.
Benefits of CTV over traditional TV advertising for political campaigns
CTV political ads are a great way to familiarize a candidate’s core audiences with their message and engage them with the campaign. Here are some specific ways a political campaign can benefit from CTV in its advertising strategies.
Broadened access to data
Traditional broadcast and cable TV are a means of one-way communication. This means viewers consume broadcasted content without direct interaction or a feedback loop for tracking engagement and behavior data.
CTV solves the limitations of traditional TV by offering access to more data than linear TV using technology and internet connectivity to gather real-time insights. CTV data on audience interactions, preferences, demographics, behaviors, location, income, and more enable precise targeting and tailored messaging for more impactful campaigns. Furthermore, digital infrastructure enables CTV devices to track clicks, ad impressions, and conversions, which marketers can use to understand interests, viewing habits, and audience demographics more effectively. To sum it up, CTV broadens the scope of data available for political campaigns to refine their targeting.
Targeted, personalized ad experiences
With traditional TV advertising, marketers have historically had to rely on mass marketing strategies, broadcasting ads to a general audience and hoping to reach the right demographic segments. This imprecise approach limits a marketer’s control over who sees their ads and wastes time and money.
In contrast, CTV platforms can collect abundant data on viewer behavior, preferences, and demographics, helping advertisers precisely target audiences and reach groups most likely to benefit from the ads. With CTV, advertisers can segment audiences based on gender, age, interests, location, and past viewing behavior. This level of granularity enables them to customize their messages to resonate with specific people and increase the relevance and effectiveness of their political ad campaigns. By delivering ads to the right groups of people at the right time, CTV helps advertisers maximize campaign impact and drive better results.
It’s worth noting that streaming viewership is beginning to change. Although younger generations have engaged the most with CTV, there is research to show that older generations are starting to help fuel its continued growth. Gen X and Baby Boomers have begun to embrace streaming and seek out ad-supported services to ad-free alternatives. These gradual shifts in behavior highlight the importance of understanding streaming generations to reach target audiences effectively.
Real-time ad campaign optimization
While traditional TV relies on fixed ad placements, CTV offers programmatic buying, which refers to buying and selling ad placements on CTV through automated technology. Programmatic CTV advertising is highly data-driven, which gives advertisers flexibility in their messaging strategies, helps them refine their targeting, and deliver relevant ads to the right people at the right time. With real-time analytics, campaigns can monitor ad performance, adapt to changing circumstances, and make data-driven decisions to maximize advertising impact and budget efficiency leading up to the election.
Challenges and considerations for advertisers
Despite how widely beneficial CTV advertising can be for political campaigns, marketers also need to be aware of its limitations.
Navigating ad fraud
Ad fraud is a major problem for unsuspecting advertisers. CTV ad fraud involves fake CTV devices or bots mimicking viewership and cheating marketers into paying for unviewed or non-existent ad placements. According to DoubleVerify’s Global Insights, CTV bot fraud increased nearly 70% in 2022 compared to the previous year, with CTV fraud instances tripling since 2020. In 2023, digital ad fraud cost the marketing industry $84 billion. These ad fraud schemes are rising due to the high CPM of CTV ads, leading to a bigger payout for fraudsters who steal ad dollars.
One of the primary challenges is the need for better technological safeguards to detect and mitigate illegitimate traffic, such as bot activity. Political advertisers often rely on third-party ad fraud and verification technologies to avoid falling victim, but these solutions cannot guarantee complete protection. This usually leaves advertisers unaware of fraudulent activities until they’ve already incurred financial losses.
As political campaigns increasingly embrace CTV political ads, they become bigger targets for fraud and must make protection and measurement central to validating their campaign efficacy in conjunction with robust fraud detection measures. These efforts can help protect the integrity of political ad campaigns, mitigate fraud, and ensure messaging reaches genuine voters.
Ensuring ad effectiveness
Measurement and attribution of CTV political ads can be challenging. CTV offers better insights into audience preferences and behavior than linear TV, but despite the existing measurement tools, CTV is fragmented, involves many platforms, and lacks standardized metrics and attribution models tailored to political campaign goals. These problems make it hard to compare campaign performance, track CTV users across their viewing experience, and ensure ads appear in the right environments.
To fully understand your ad effectiveness, you should ensure accurate tracking mechanisms of audience behaviors with individual ads to assess the impact of CTV campaigns on voter engagement and turnout. This will help you better understand how to achieve campaign objectives, where to focus your efforts, and how to appeal to viewers in future campaigns.
It may also be helpful to understand some of the metrics advertisers currently employ for CTV measurement, including completion rate and return on ad spend (ROAS). Because CTV ads often can’t be skipped, this advertising strategy has a high completion rate, sometimes nearing 90%. ROAS is more focused on what you get in return for your ads, allowing you to track profits per dollar spent on ads. Political marketers can also use metrics like campaign impressions, total reach, view-through rate, and cost per completed view to understand how their ads are performing.
Ethical considerations related to transparency and misinformation
Political advertisers are responsible for upholding transparency and accuracy in their messaging to build trust with voters. Given how polarized the current political climate is, misinformation could make or break a political campaign. Whether intentional or unintentional, spreading misinformation through CTV can undermine the democratic process and erode public confidence in political institutions. Political marketers must do their best to prioritize ethical conduct, adhere to regulatory guidelines, and ensure their ads convey truthful information to voters.
Looking ahead: CTV in the 2024 elections
The current election cycle promises record-breaking political ad spending in 2024 and will underscore CTV’s role in shaping the future of political communication and engagement. With shifting viewer preferences and the ongoing evolution of digital media consumption habits, political campaigns need to look at CTV as a critical platform for voter engagement so they can allocate resources and shift their strategy to harness its full potential.
Using the targeted capabilities and expansive reach CTV advertising offers, political entities can optimize ad creative for the streaming environment, implement data-driven targeting strategies, and effectively connect with voters across diverse demographics and geographic regions.
Reach your ideal voters with Experian’s political audiences
Effective audience targeting is essential for political campaigns wanting to sway voters and shape public opinion in the next election. Don’t miss the opportunity to reach your ideal voters and make a lasting impact in the 2024 elections! With Experian’s political audiences, you can target voters based on their political affiliations, personas, and attitudes toward relevant ballot initiatives in your advanced TV advertising.
Experian offers a comprehensive range of political and geo-indexed audiences designed to help political campaigns and organizations connect with desired segments in a meaningful and impactful way. Our geo-indexed audiences can help you discover, segment, and craft messaging without the use of sensitive personal information, so you can confidently reach your target audience without sacrificing data privacy.
Our syndicated audiences also span multiple verticals and categories. With over 240 politically relevant audience segments available for activation, you can confidently execute your political campaign marketing strategy with precision and impact. When you connect with our audience team, we can also help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice.
Partner with us to reach your ideal voters and make a lasting impact in the 2024 elections.
Latest posts
African Americans represent 11% of the U.S. adult population and, as a group, constitute the nation’s largest racial minority market. African Americans are also more optimistic about their financial situation than the general population, and with good reason. According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, African American buying power reached $913 billion in 2008, up from $590 billion in 2000. By 2013, African American buying power will reach an astonishing $1.2 trillion, meaning that almost nine cents out of every dollar spent in the United States will come from African American consumers. In celebration of Black History Month, Experian Simmons examines the attitudes, behaviors and media consumption of our country’s African American consumers using data from Simmons DataStreamSM, the Simmons National Consumer Study, New Media Study, Multi-Media Engagement Study and Experian MicromarketerG3 as well as findings from our friends at Experian Hitwise. When it comes to attitudes towards personal financial outlook, African Americans are more likely than the average American adult to say that in the next 12 months they will be better off financially. As of December 28th, 2009, 36% of African Americans said they would be better off financially in the next 12 months, compared with 31% of all adults who felt the same. African Americans are trend setters. Below are the top indexing statements on apparel, auto, food and social interaction among African American adults compared to the total adult population. Index relative to total adult population in parentheses. House Beautiful magazine is a great publication for reaching African Americans who respond to print ads. Readers of House Beautiful, for instance, are 37% more likely to be African American and House Beautiful scores 83% higher than the average magazine among African American readers who say they are likely to buy product or services advertised in the magazine. Where in the United States is the best place to find African American consumers with household incomes of $100,000 or more? Hinesville-Fort Stewart, Georgia is tops followed by Fresno and Stockton, California. African American consumers are more likely than the average online adult to use a wide range of emerging technologies and media. For instance, online African American consumers are 20% more likely than average to watch movies online, 19% more likely to listen to Internet radio and 18% more likely to use social tags or bookmarks. Below are the top sites ranked by the percentage of visits coming from the top African American Mosaic lifestyle segments. The list is dominated by social networking sites.
Coffee drinkers in America Coffee plays such an integral part of every day life in America that it may be safe to say that coffee helps the United States go round. In fact, fully 60% of all U.S. households use either whole or ground coffee beans at home. Experian Simmons extensively reviewed the American coffee drinker for this report which features detailed insights into the coffee-drinking American. In addition, we compare the patrons of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, the leading players in the battle for brew. Coffee in the Home The average U.S. household that uses whole or ground coffee consumes 4.2 cups per day. In total that’s about 280.5 million cups of coffee consumed at home by Americans each day or about 102 billion cups per year. Among households that use coffee, 89% stock regular coffee and 46% stock decaf.* Among households that use coffee, 84% use pre-ground coffee and 26% use whole bean coffee at least some of the time.* Instant Flavored Coffee Over a quarter of households (27%) stock instant coffee. Sixteen percent of households use instant flavored coffee. The most commonly used flavors among instant flavored coffee drinkers are: Older Americans More Likely to Drink Coffee Fifty-seven percent of adults ages 18-24 live in households that use coffee, but 25 to 34 year olds are the least likely to stock coffee in their cupboards with only 54% reporting they use whole or ground bean coffee at home. Coffee Use Increases with Household Income Seventy percent of Americans who report annual household incomes of $150,000+ drink coffee compared with 54% of those with household income less than $25,000. Dunkin' Donuts Vs. Starbucks Dunkin' Donuts 11% of American adults go to DD Between 9.15.08 and 9.15.09 the share of DD customers who go there 6+ times a month is up 11%* DD consumers are 41% more likely than the average adult to be registered Independents and 9% less likely to be registered Republicans Starbucks 13% of American adults go to Starbucks Between 9.15.08 and 9.15.09 the share of Starbucks customers who go there 6+ times a month is down 22% Starbucks consumers are 11% more likely to be registered Independents and 11% more likely to be registered Republicans Coffee Drinkers Are Coffee Drinkers A majority of coffee-drinking Americans are loyal to their franchise. However, there are a considerable number of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks consumers who jump between coffee houses. How Often Americans Order Their Coffee The majority of both Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks customers visit each chain between one and five times in a typical month. Learn more about Simmons consumer research and studies.
Two-thirds of U.S. Households Use Coupons Two-thirds of American households (67%) use coupons. And while the vast majority of households using coupons (87%) say they use them to save money, 30% also say that coupons are a way for them to try out new products. Newspapers are still the number one coupon source with 70% of coupon households still getting their coupons from a newspaper. The Internet is growing as a coupon source. A quarter of coupon households get coupons online today, up 46% in the last three years. What Americans Buy With Their coupons Nearly half of all American households use coupons to buy food/grocery products making them the most common items purchased with coupons followed by cleaning products and beauty/grooming products. Seven percent of households buy tobacco using coupons. Where Are Coupons Redeemed? Given that half of U.S. households use coupons for food/grocery products, it’s no surprise that 60% of all households redeem coupons in supermarket, grocery or convenient stores. While only a quarter of all households use coupons at restaurants/fast food chains, that number has risen by 9% since 2006, when 23% of households redeemed coupons at restaurants. Coupons Attract New Consumers With the start of the holiday shopping season around the corner retailers want to make sure consumers visit their store and/or website. One way to drive consumer traffic is with coupons. Close to 50 percent of American adults say they are likely to be drawn to a store they don’t normally shop at by a coupon. The Experian Simmons retail shopping segment known as Mall Maniacs make up just 12% of all shoppers, but that group is 82% more likely to be drawn to a new store by a coupon. Percentage of U.S. Adult Population by Shopping Segment Mall Maniacs and Status Strivers are 66% and 26% more likely, respectively, to appreciate getting emails that announce new products and services. Identifying these consumers is key to maximize online marketing dollars. Additionally, with more and more consumers shopping online, companies should ensure that coupons are redeemable both online and in-stores.