Are you leveraging rich audience insights in your voter targeting?

The 2022 midterm political season will generate $8.6 billion in local ad dollars, according to BIA Advisory Services. Although most ad dollars this political season will still be spent on local television, political campaigns are wising up to the power of advertising on Connected TV(CTV), due to its more precise targeting and measurability.

For political campaigns, there are no shortage of advertising options – TV, print, radio, social media, streaming and mobile, to name a few. In addition to activating the right media strategies, campaigns must also choose the right voter segments from a wide range of markets to both engage with and persuade. How should political campaigns activate the right media strategies and appropriate budgets to match? More importantly, how do you ensure your ads are reaching voter segments that are most likely to help you win this cycle?

By leveraging advanced voter insights for political campaigns, you can identify, better understand, and reach the voter segments that have the most impact in helping you win. These richer insights help you plan the most effective media buys for your campaign and edge out the competition.

Identifying the right audiences for your political campaign

If you are not leveraging data driven insights to identify and reach unique voter segments, you’re missing out on key votes needed to win your race. For the most effective planning, campaigns must go beyond traditional demographics, such as age, gender, and ethnicity, and also look at audience interests and behaviors to better understand and communicate with voters. With access to deeper voter insights by party preference or cause, you’ll be able to understand the psychographics of your target audiences.

For campaigns that wish to engage multicultural voters, access to rich, behavioral insights enables a better understanding of diverse groups and how to best communicate with them. As shown in our recent U.S. Multicultural Trends Report, multicultural voters have differentiated streaming and app interests on their mobile and CTV devices.

Take a deeper look: The U.S. Multicultural Trends Report

This year, App Science® won a Reed Award for our innovative approach to media buying — helping political campaigns leverage data and execute smarter strategies and tactics for their ad buys. One of our clients effectively reached their supporters in the primary but needed help identifying persuadable non-party preference voters in the general election, particularly those who were parents of young children.

By analyzing the audience profiles of their known supporters, we were able to identify additional voters that matched the behavioral attributes of their known supporters, including those who had parenting mobile apps on their smart phones or watched children’s programming on their TVs.

How to reach ideal voters and get out the vote

Once you’ve identified your target audiences, utilize advanced insights to validate and inform your media buying strategies. In addition to helping our clients identify unique voter segments, we provide more specific insight into their personal interests, which can help campaigns decide where to place targeted ads.

By using an advanced data solution, your campaign receives deeper insights on voter behavior, which empowers your digital team to refine placement, reduce duplication, and monitor frequency.

Access to rich voter insights provides campaigns with voter demographics, such as age, gender, location, ethnicity, income, and unique behavioral data, including:

• Party preference​
• Voter history​
• Donor info
• Cause interests
• Shows they watch
• Top viewing genres
• Top mobile apps
• Top mobile app categories
• Top podcasts

Optimize your campaigns with measurement

Once you’ve picked your ideal media strategies, lean on advanced analytics to forecast the impact of your campaigns. Use an audience measurement solution like App Science® to regularly validate your audiences and discover new ones. Monitor frequency and duplication to ensure overall campaign efficiency.

With rich campaign insights, you can always keep a pulse on what is working well and what will help your candidate win on election day. 

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