It’s time to start planning political ad campaigns. If your client thinks that they can get by just fine taking the traditional route of relying on TV ads, they're sorely mistaken. Not everyone watches TV ads, especially with ad-​free streaming services offering compelling content. So, your client is missing out on reaching the voters they need to get their messages to. According to a report by MiQ, “Political campaigns that maintain a linear TV-​centric strategy don’t just risk over indexing against certain groups – they are restricted in how much of the voting population they actually reach.” Because of that, ads for both Republican and Democratic candidates missed reaching between 25% and 40% of potential voters.

Here’s how your political ad clients should switch up their strategies in order to make their ads super effective.

How to Make Your Client’s Political Ads Super Effective

Linear TV Ads

Now, no one is saying that your client should cut out linear TV political ads entirely. According to MiQ, the average American consumer still spends roughly three hours and 17 minutes watching linear TV on a daily basis. That’s more than the average daily streaming service viewing time of two hours and 29 minutes. However, nearly 75% of linear TV viewers are ages 50 and above. Only 9.8% of linear TV viewership is made up of 18- to 34-​year-​olds. We all know consumers over the age of 50 are still an important voting demographic. So, keeping some linear TV ads in your client’s political ad strategy is a good move.

Connected-​TV Ads

While linear TV may have a higher daily average viewing time than connected-​TV (CTAV), CTV’s viewership is growing. The 3+ daily hours that linear TV accounts for is an 8% year-​over-​year decrease. CTV’s 2.5 daily viewing hours, however, is a 6% year-​over-​year increase. As such, about 66% of brands plan to increase their CTV advertising budgets this year. Additionally, 18- to 34-​year-​olds make up 54% of CTV watchers, so these ads can help bridge the age gap in your client’s political ads.

Digital Ads

However, your political ad clients need more than just TV ads in their campaign strategy. MiQ reports that, “The top 40% of the exposed households consumed over 90% of all TV impressions ~70% of political ads. The bottom 60% accounted for less than a tenth of all TV impressions viewed.” How can your client bridge that kind of an ad exposure gap? With digital political ads.

Truly effective political ad campaigns should have a media strategy that “flows seamlessly between traditional and digital channels,” says MiQ. But how can your client know which types of digital ads will work best with their target audience?

Cue AudienceSCAN research on AdMall by SalesFuel. On AudienceSCAN, you can look up which types of digital ads influenced the most consumers to take action within the last year among consumer groups such as:

• Every Election Voters
• Presidential Race-​Only Voters
• Political Show Watchers
• Political Talk Listeners
• And more!

Additionally, you can research the demographic/​political affiliation of different types of digital advertising responders. For instance, did you know that Sponsored Search Result Responders are made up of:

• Registered Democrats: 32.3%
• People who vote during every election: 21.2%
• Registered Republicans: 20.7%
• Moderates: 15%
• People who are liberal/​progressive on social issues: 12.8%

If there are specific digital formats that your client would like to add their media buy during upcoming campaign, just check out those ad-​type responders on AudienceSCAN to see if their political views align with your client’s message. If not, no worries. All you have to do is keep going down your client’s digital ad wish list until you find one that does.

Photo by Phillip Goldsberry