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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.
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With the impending deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers find themselves at the crossroads of innovation and adaptation. As we bid farewell to this identifier, the emphasis shifts to forging deeper connections, understanding customer needs, and navigating the marketing landscape with data-driven precision. At Experian, we stand as your trusted partner, committed to guiding you through this transition. In this blog post, we'll explore: How third-party cookie deprecation is impacting digital advertising Six alternatives to third-party cookies and where they fall short How Experian can help you navigate a cookieless world Four ways third-party cookie deprecation is impacting digital advertising Third-party cookie deprecation is causing significant challenges within the AdTech industry, manifesting in four key areas: Reach: Advertisers and demand-side platforms (DSPs) will face difficulties in reaching their target customers due to the absence of third-party cookies. Understanding audiences: Advertisers will find it challenging to understand the demographics and behaviors of their customer base without third-party cookies. Similarly, publishers are struggling to identify their audiences accurately, resulting in less addressable and appealing inventory. Measurement: Measurement providers may encounter obstacles in accurately assessing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Additionally, DSPs are finding it hard to measure the impact of their ads without the assistance of third-party cookies. Matching: Data providers may experience challenges in matching users with the appropriate audience segments, leading to difficulties in delivering targeted advertising. Six alternatives to third-party cookies As the deadline approaches for Google's removal of third-party cookies from Chrome by the end of 2024, marketers are scrambling to discover alternative methods for delivering effective advertising. Fortunately, various alternatives are emerging. However, the abundance of options can create confusion rather than clarity. Which alternatives are worth considering? Here are six compelling alternatives to third-party cookies: 1. First-party data Acquiring consented first-party data directly from users is becoming increasingly vital as it can lay the groundwork for more precise targeting. 2. Universal IDs Alternative identifiers like The Trade Desk's UID2 and ID5’s Universal ID are becoming increasingly important, offering the ability to maintain a comprehensive consumer view across channels and platforms, leading to enhanced personalization and addressability across various channels, even in cookieless environments. 3. Identity graphs As browser-based IDs shift and digital signals decline, the need for an identity graph grows, with companies adopting a "graph-of-graph" strategy by combining their own robust first-party data with licensed identity graphs, as highlighted in recent announcements by industry giants such as Disney, VideoAmp, and Magnite. 4. Contextual targeting Contextual targeting aligns publisher content with relevant ads, ensuring ad delivery based on content rather than individual identifiers. This privacy-respecting approach is less dependent on third-party cookies, providing effective audience activation. 5. Data collaboration In a cookieless world, it becomes more difficult for companies to "communicate" with one another. We expect to see more pick up of data collaboration in the market, using addressable IDs and identity resolution to power connectivity between partners and their data sets. 6. Google Privacy Sandbox The primary goal of Google’s Privacy Sandbox is to continue to deliver valuable consumer information that yields relevant marketing and media strategies, while protecting a user’s privacy. How these alternatives to cookies fall short While it's promising to see numerous alternatives to cookies emerging, it's essential to recognize that each alternative has its limitations and is not a perfect one-to-one replacement for third-party cookies. Let’s review the shortcomings of these alternatives, and then we’ll walk through how Experian can help you navigate these alternatives to cookies. 1. First-party data First-party data, which is data directly collected from your users with their consent, is highly valuable. However, you will likely face limitations in terms of the number of consumers in your database, the identifiers linking them, and the insights into their demographics and behaviors. 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Data collaboration Data collaboration is beneficial for enhancing your consumer data and informing your strategies. However, it can introduce potential data security risks, if not done in the right framework, and may lead to subpar matching results due to issues like data hygiene or discrepancies in identifiers. 6. Google Privacy Sandbox Google’s Privacy Sandbox aims to balance effective advertising with consumer privacy and data security. However, it lacks transparency and has yet to prove its effectiveness, raising concerns about whether it meets industry standards. How Experian can help you navigate a cookieless world As an industry innovator and leader in data and identity, we've developed solutions to address the challenges posed by the shift away from third-party cookies. Our products are designed to adapt to these changes and ensure your success. We've anticipated industry shifts and proactively prepared our offerings to support you through this transition. Below we outline how our products are ready to support you through the transition away from third-party cookies. Graph The Experian Graph facilitates connectivity without relying on cookies. Our Graph helps ensure connectivity by supporting a variety of addressable identifiers, not limited to but including universal IDs, like Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) and ID5's universal ID. Whether you have first-party data or not, our Graph can be used to expand the reach of your first-party data or provide you with access to the full scope of our Graph's 126 million households and 250 million individuals. Activity Feed Supported by our Graph, Activity Feed can help you deliver digital connectivity and resolution in a cookieless environment. Activity Feed can resolve disparate activity to a single, consumer profile. It can expand the quantity of addressable identifiers associated with your first-party consumers. Additionally, Activity Feed, by joining disparate activity and identifiers, provides clearer insights, more addressable targets, and more holistic measurement. Our Marketing Attributes and Audiences In a cookieless environment, our Marketing Attributes and Audiences provide valuable information and insights about who your consumers are, like their demographics, shopping patterns, and more, to facilitate more informed decision-making. You can use our Marketing Attributes and Audiences to enrich your first-party data, giving you crucial insights into your customers so you can make informed, strategic decisions. They can be matched to universal identifiers, expanding their utility. Additionally, our Marketing Attributes and Audiences are sourced from non-cookie dependent offline and digital sources, ensuring they are unimpacted by third-party cookie deprecation. Collaboration While third-party cookies have primarily served to connect data in the industry, many companies are turning to data collaboration in lieu of having third-party cookies. In doing so, they can connect data with key partners, which they can use to make better media decisions. Experian Collaboration helps make data collaborations better, powering higher match rates by using the various identifiers supported in our offline and digital graphs. Through our current support of collaboration in three environments, within Experian, through crosswalks, and in clean rooms, such as AWS, InfoSum, and Snowflake, we ensure that you only share the data you intend to share, while the sensitive information remains secure. This way, your partner and you can focus on how to use the data to benefit you and not on anything else. Get started with alternatives to third-party cookies today While many view the deprecation of third-party cookies as disruptive, we see it as an opportunity for the industry to embrace a new era of advertising while prioritizing consumer privacy. Achieving this balance is crucial, and Experian's solutions are here to help you navigate it effectively. As the AdTech industry gravitates toward a few tactics to effectively advertise in the cookieless future, Experian is here to understand your core needs and recommend products that will help. In a rapidly evolving marketing landscape, Experian stands as your trusted partner, offering expertise in data-driven and identity solutions. Connect with our team to seamlessly transition into these alternatives to third-party cookies, ensuring your marketing strategies remain effective, privacy-compliant, and focused on meaningful connections. Get started today Latest posts
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Connect with us to learn more about how you can access Experian’s syndicated audiences through Flashtalking by Mediaocean. About Flashtalking by Mediaocean Flashtalking unleashes the power of creative to make media work better. As the leading independent platform for personalization and intelligence across all marketing channels, our Creative Ad Tech bridges the gap between creative and media. We provide AI and automation to connect the silos between teams and deliver more efficient production, versioning, and distribution of creative. Our solutions operate at scale across CTV, Video, Display, Social, Native, Audio, DOOH, and Retail Media channels. As part of Mediaocean, Flashtalking is tied into the industry’s core ad infrastructure for omnichannel planning, buying, and billing. Visit flashtalking.com to learn more. Latest posts
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