Most political campaigns still infiltrate the TV airwaves with ads in the run-up to primaries and general elections. TV ads serve an important purpose, but there’s nothing that screams “old school” like a TV ad. Political campaigners have fortunately converted to the power of digital advertising, and the online battlegrounds are starting to take shape. The payoff is simple: spending media on digital leads to far more cost efficiencies in reaching the exact people whom they want to reach.
With all the potential and complexity of the digital landscape, political candidates and their campaign managers are faced with the challenge of staying ahead of the voter – how can they deliver content voters want, when and where they want it? The good news is it’s never been easier to deliver relevant ads at scale to a political advertising landscape dominated by old media. The bad news is – those political advertisers who are late to the game are likely to spend inefficiently and lose the mindshare of a burgeoning class of digitally-aware voters.
Sophisticated political players already use micro-targeting to find their audience – based on a variety of data from voter and donation history. This can include everything from voter satisfaction with the current regime, to whether the voter is likely to be undecided or not. Advertisers only show ads to the audiences that they seek to persuade. Voter file targeting is hot, and it’s a smart and efficient way to spend hard-earned campaign dollars.
There’s even more to do. The next step is tailoring political advertising creative to engaging and relevant messaging. Here is where Dynamic Creative enters the political scene. Dynamic Creative allows advertisers to present the most relevant ad content for each of their niche audiences, at just the right time, in scale – and without busting the budget.
Tips for using Dynamic Creative for political advertising
Engage the Audience. Voters do not need to be bombarded with the same creative over and over again. They will simply get bored and lose interest in any engagement. By using Dynamic Creative, political advertisers can have conversations with their constituency. Producing dozens of creative versions of an ad is simple. Organize the ads in a sequence or rotate them around, and constantly add new talking points over the duration of the campaign.
Be Nimble. Advertisers should be flexible when it comes to responding to their opponents or relevant events. Tools such as Dynamic Creative get the approved message out, quickly and efficiently, even those well-timed rebuttals. Campaign cycles are full of opportune moments – make the most of them with a rapid response.
Don’t Just Retarget. Engage. While on a politician’s site, a visitor leaves valuable indications about what issues they care about. Intelligent creative retargeting makes sure that your creative reflects the interest of that user, and political advertisers can deliver top-notch messaging on what they care about.
In these ads from the 2012 presidential election, messages are presented to resonate with different groups of voters. A single ad template can incorporate diverse images and text either to retarget audiences with relevant messages or simply keep messages fresh over time – with minimal production.
Harness Audience Buys. If an advertiser is micro-targeting cookie lists, are they also serving the same generic creative? In the last election cycle, targeted buys raced well ahead of targeted content. Using Dynamic Creative, advertisers can get smarter with their smart buys. Using data about an audience’s demo or interests, sophisticated analytical models reveal the issue the political advertiser’s audience segment is most likely to care about. Make sure the content reflects those issues.
Geo-Target, Geo-Fence and Share Local Events. Use Dynamic Creative for getting the message out about upcoming local events or rallies. Adjust creative quickly, and tailor it geographically. You can target that message to a zip code, a city and its suburbs, or
geo-fence it around a location.
Here’s a powerful example from Obama for America. A single ad template like this can be used to target voters in key swing states using a countdown feature to create a sense of urgency and a call to action deep-linking voters to their nearby poll location.
Consider Other Forms of Targeting. Targeting through sophisticated audience buys will get the advertiser to some of their intended audience, but there’s still a large pool out there that may not be reachable through these techniques. Still, advertisers can speak to these constituents about the issues they’re likely to care about. What users are reading gives an indication about their interest, and what issues are important to them. Why not tailor the ad to speak to those issues?
Creatively Optimize. What types of messages or imagery are most successful in attracting potential voters to a campaign site? And what call to action is
most successful in signing up volunteers, or driving donations? Let creative optimization do the ground work, it will automatically show the creative that’s most successful in driving campaign goals. Have an optimization engine that enables the optimization of each audience segments.
Go Dynamic with Video. There’s nothing like video as a medium of persuasion. Top that by ensuring that the video campaigns themselves are dynamic and personalized. Whether advertisers personalize interactive elements of the video, or dynamically introduce new videos to an ongoing campaign over time – dynamic creative makes it all effortless and cost-efficient.
Political advertisers have nothing to lose – and a whole lot to gain – by harnessing the capabilities of digital advertising. Campaign after campaign, Dynamic Creative outperforms standard banner ads, saves hours of precious time, and, of course, it lets advertisers effortlessly refresh and customize creative versions in all kinds of campaigns – at any stage.