As we approach the 2024 election season, the advertising landscape is poised for tremendous growth, with political ad spending projected to surpass $10 billion. With Kamala Harris entering the race, spending priorities have moved, especially in key states like Ohio, where the Senate race alone has already seen $300 million in ad spending.Connected TV’s (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.
During this political campaign marketing season, effective audience targeting is crucial, as it holds the potential to sway voters, shape public opinion, and ultimately determine election outcomes. In this blog post, we’ll highlight political audiences that can assist political campaigns and organizations in connecting with their desired audiences in a meaningful and impactful way.
Three political campaign marketing audience categories
Over 240 politically relevant audiences are available on-the-shelf of leading TV, demand, and supply platforms to help your political partners gain share based on three political audience categories:
- Political affiliations
- Political personas
- Relevant ballot initiative audiences
Let’s break down each category and which audiences you can use in your political campaign marketing to target voters this upcoming election season.
Political affiliations
Target audiences could include those who are likely to be in the Democratic, Independent, or Republican parties, or are likely to not be registered to a political party. Our political affiliation audiences use a foundation of voter registration data with Experian’s advanced statistical models to reach voters at scale, based on their political party.
Here are four audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their predicted party affiliation:
- Political Affiliation > Democrat
- Political Affiliation > Republican
- Political Affiliation > Independent/Other
- Political Affiliation > Unregistered
Political personas
One key target audience could be voters who are likely to be influenced by a political candidate’s renewable energy program. Additional target audiences could include those who are likely to be influenced by a candidate’s position on the economy or healthcare.
Here are 10 audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their viewpoints on key political issues:
- Political Personas > Political Unregistered Liberal Leaning
- Political Personas > Political Unregistered Conservative Leaning
- Political Personas > Committed Democrats
- Political Personas > Moderate Democrats
- Political Personas > Political Leaning Liberals
- Political Personas > Liberal Leaning Independents
- Political Personas > Conservative Leaning Independent
- Political Personas > Political Leaning Conservatives
- Political Personas > Moderate Republicans
- Political Personas > Committed Republicans
To reach voters who believe the environment is a key political issue, you can layer in our GreenAware audiences with our Political Personas audiences:
- GreenAware > Behavioral Greens
- GreenAware > Think Greens
- GreenAware > Potential Greens
- GreenAware > True Browns
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Shopping Behavior > Smart Greens
To reach voters based on their regional voting patterns, you can use our new battleground counties and district audiences:
- Affiliation Switcher Counties
- Battleground Counties
- House Battleground Districts
- Democrat Counties
- Republican Counties
- Independent Counties
Relevant ballot initiative audiences
You can also reach voters based on their attitudes and behaviors related to key ballot measures. Let’s walk through a few examples below and highlight relevant syndicated audiences that you can activate during the 2024 political campaign marketing season.
Local and national ballot initiative support
Consumer behaviors are often great predictors of down-ballot initiatives. For example, military families may show favor toward initiatives supporting veterans, households with children present may show more interest in school funding, and those interested in the environment will favor green initiatives. Experian offers an array of consumer behavior and interests audiences to help you fine-tune your targeting and messaging strategies.
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Occupation > Military – Active
- Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 0-18
Charitable causes
Understanding where consumers are actively donating to charitable causes paints a clear picture into their political interests.
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Charitable Causes > Contributes to Political Charities
- Consumer Financial Insights > Discretionary Spend – Donations > $1,000-$1,999
Demographics
Demographics play a critical role into voter opinions with presence of children, age, and household income influencing decisions at the polls.
- Geo-Indexed > Demographics > Household Income: $50,000-$74,999
- Geo-Indexed > Demographics > Education: Bachelor Degree
- Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 10-12
- Demographics > Marital status > Single
- Demographics > Ages > 19-24
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Moms, Parents, Families > Mothers with infant child(ren) (0-3 yrs old)
Millions of campaign dollars were wasted in the 2022 midterm elections when voters were targeted with ads for issues and candidates they couldn’t vote for. Using advances in geo-targeting can help save wasted spend and ensure relevant messages reach the right voters.
Finance
Income and large financial decisions often trigger changes in perspective and influence voter behaviors.
- Financial FLA Friendly1 > Income > $1,000-$24,999
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market New Mortgage
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market Auto Loan
Media consumption and engagement
Media consumption and engagement offers great insights into how voter interest, current channel engagement, and engagement in political issues.
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences > Engagement Channel Preference > Email Engagement
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences > Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV
- Social Media > Snapchat
- Purchase Transactions > Ad Responders > Digital
- Television (TV) > Ad Avoiders/Ad Acceptors > Ad Acceptors
Mosaic
Proprietary persona-based audience solution that combines demographic and behavioral data to create a holistic view of voters and their interests.
- Mosaic – Personas – Lifestyle and Interests > Group O: Singles and Starters > O55 – Family Troopers
Occupation
Provides the opportunity to deliver targeted messaging on measures based on a consumer’s occupation.
- Demographics > Occupation > Management/Business and Financial Operations
- Demographics > Occupation > Sales
- Demographics > Occupation > Farming/Fish/Forestry
- Consumer Behaviors > At-Home: Retired/Empty Nesters
- Consumer Behaviors > Occupation: Education
Personal views
Understand consumers personal views around family, their social and work life.
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Work Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Family Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Social Isolation
We can help you match your message to your audience
With Experian’s political audiences, you can confidently execute your political campaign marketing, knowing our audiences are based on voter registration data and advanced predictive technology. Our highly accurate models are validated by our expert audience team to ensure precise targeting and drive impact and influence with the right audience. We understand that finding a trusted data provider can be a challenge, which is why we make it easy to access our syndicated audiences.
For a full list of all of Experian’s syndicated audiences, download our syndicated audiences guide.
You can activate our political audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. Can’t find the audience you’re looking for or need a custom audience? Connect with our audience team for more information.
Footnote
- “Fair Lending Friendly” indicates data fields that Experian has made available without use of certain demographic attributes that may increase the likelihood of discriminatory practices prohibited by the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”). These excluded attributes include, but may not be limited to, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, disability, handicap, family status, ancestry, sexual orientation, unfavorable military discharge, and gender. Experian’s provision of Fair Lending Friendly indicators does not constitute legal advice or otherwise assures your compliance with the FHA, ECOA, or any other applicable laws. Clients should seek legal advice with respect to your use of data in connection with lending decisions or application and compliance with applicable laws.
Latest posts
Marketers are under more pressure than ever before to prove ROI and efficiency of marketing activities in relation to business performance. On top of that, there are new privacy regulations and uncertainty around what new technologies will have to be implemented in order to replace the granular level targeting and measurement the industry historically has used third-party cookies for. It’s clear marketers are going to need the right tech stack and partners to continue to prove their team’s efficacy. We recently partnered with Forrester Consulting to evaluate the current state of customer data-driven marketing and surveyed over 300 global marketing decision makers at the brand and agency levels. We found that marketing is facing increased demands today, insights from the study include: Consumers expect brands to deliver engaging experiences across highly fragmented journeys. Seventy-two percent of decision-makers reported that customers demand more relevant, personalized experiences at the time and place of their choosing. Marketing runs on data, but the rules governing customer data usage are changing quickly. More than 70% of study participants stated that consumer data is the lifeblood of their marketing strategies, fueling the personalized, omnichannel experiences customers demand. These demands paint a challenging picture. Just as marketers are poised (and tasked) with delivering greater value to their organizations and customers, the ground rules are changing and threatening their ability to deliver. Indeed, 62% of respondents said that the forces of data deprecation will have either a “Significant” (40%) or “Critical” (21%) impact on their marketing strategies over the next two years. Effective identity resolution can help brands prepare for data deprecation challenges Marketers face a daunting landscape, but they can leverage the data, technology, and processes that comprise identity resolution to address business objectives, combat ecosystem complexity, and future-proof customer engagement efforts. By utilizing identity resolution, marketers will be able to match and connect multiple identifiers across devices and touchpoints. This allows for a cohesive, omnichannel view that enables brands to continue to deliver personalized and contextually relevant messages throughout the customer journey and without the use of cookies. The identity graph is the underlying infrastructure that defines connections between the numerous, fluid, and disparate identifiers created during moments of consumer engagement, turning disparate signals into addressable and actionable steps. These connections enable brands to bolster their ability to gain deeper customer insights and power audience building, attribution, and connected measurement. Identity resolution encompasses a wide range of capabilities that support an equally diverse set of marketing use cases. These include the targeting, personalization, and measurement of both known and pseudonymous audiences in the offline and digital worlds, which enables marketers to improve customer data management, drive more effective personalization, and gain insights and efficiencies through measurement across touchpoints. By taking the time to vet the privacy procedures and data collection processes of identity solutions you can reduce your regulatory risk and maintain customer trust. In an open-ended survey response, a marketer shared, “We’ve found that users are willing to volunteer data when they understand what it’s being used for and are asked for clear consent.” Finding the right partners to help navigate the changes The scramble to find an alternative to third-party cookies has slowed down since Google announced they will be delaying their cookie removal until late 2023. However, this gives marketers a unique opportunity to take advantage of the additional time and feel more prepared and confident in their solutions. With the delay, marketers can now test ID solutions and compare apples to apples with data from the third-party cookie while it’s still active and addressable. Test and find a solution that works now, so there are no surprises once cookies have finally made their way out the door in 2023. At Tapad, a part of Experian, we’ve developed a solution that provides agnostic interoperability for the myriad of cookieless identifiers emerging in the market. As a new module in the Tapad Graph, Switchboard will connect traditional digital identifiers to cookieless IDs to support the entire ad ecosystem with privacy-safe future-proof identity resolution. Get started with The Tapad Graph For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today!
Identity is being constrained, forcing the industry to rethink the way it has operated for 27 years. Industry, regulatory, technology and data trends are leading to a fundamental shift in the way that data is permissioned, accessed, and used for marketing purposes. How the industry defines digital identity moving forward, consumer trust and transparency need to be at the forefront. We, as an industry, have the opportunity to build a more effective advertising framework that puts consumers and data privacy at its core, a framework that won’t rely on a single prevailing identifier. That approach requires all of us to be upfront and transparent about our data practices and usage and make it easy for consumers to opt-out of the use of their information for advertising and marketing solicitations. We, at Experian, also believe that there are a lot of ways to improve the experience for consumers, who are becoming more aware and apprehensive of giving away their data. We believe we can ease the minds of consumers and work within these new constraints by offering better controls and practices around the ways data is shared and utilized. There will be new approaches that come to the market as well that include modeled, non-identifiable information, cohorts, contextual
It’s no secret that the COVID-19 Delta variant is threatening holiday plans across the country. As CDC mandates change and the flu season matures, we’re asking big questions that impact businesses and marketers across the country: Will customers mostly stay at home and order online? Or will people drive to the store and fly to family gatherings? The answer is probably both—but, as we’ve learned, a lot can change overnight. And we want to be prepared this time around. While many of us make vacation plans with a “wait and see” attitude, we want firmer footing at work. To cope with uncertainty, holiday marketing strategies straddle assumptions and require agility. To protect some of the biggest campaigns of the year, marketers need the ability to: Monitor changing customer behaviors during flu season. Track marketing KPIs for campaign performance and quick adaptability. Pivot audience targeting strategy when safety guidelines change. We built Discovery Platform to give you all three so that you can execute your marketing strategy with confidence. Discovery is built on top of robust consumer data and the best-in-class Identity graph that Experian is known for. It offers turn-key activation capability to keep your marketing campaigns agile and efficient this holiday season. Here’s how you can use Discovery Platform to protect your marketing interests from rapidly changing safety guidelines. Track store traffic against competitors Discovery Platform enables Experian clients to keep a tap on their store traffic and relate it to how competitors and overall business category is doing. Monitoring these trends can help marketers adapt to changing consumer behaviors as flu season evolves. Track marketing KPIs Tracking and adjusting ongoing campaign targeting strategy remains a top priority throughout the pandemic, especially during colder, winter months. Discovery enables you to evaluate your campaign targeting strategy in relation with your loyalty card shoppers and in-flight campaign KPIs to drive higher return on ad spend and Customer Lifetime Value. With Discovery’s OmniImpact integration clients can even conduct control test measurement studies. Pivot campaigns quickly You can use Discovery’s Audience Engine integration to build and deploy custom audiences to social, digital, email and Connected TV partners. This gives you the ability to quickly pivot campaign channels once you detect changes in consumer behavior or dips in campaign performance. The sales and customer data flowing into Discovery Platform puts all the insights you need in one place to inform your team’s next marketing strategy. Watch our Discovery Platform demo or contact us to learn how Experian can help you create more effective, agile marketing campaigns for the holidays.