ORLANDO\u2014Driven by advances in data-driven targeting, political advertising on local cable television is soaring in advance of the mid-term elections. To FreeWheel\u2019s Joy Baer, it\u2019s a microcosm of what lies ahead for all advertisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmotions are running high. The good news is spend is running very high as well,\u201d already surpassing spending in the 2016 election cycle two weeks before the mid-terms, Baer explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers\u2019 Masters of Marketing Conference<\/a>. \u201cSo it\u2019s a very exciting space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the dollar figures are trends showing that data \u201cis playing a really key role in enabling the right type of targeting.\u201d Local cable\u2019s share of political advertising budgets is at 33%, \u201cwhich is an all-time high for cable advertising. We\u2019re also seeing that their ability to go deeper into the networks that they\u2019re selling and the candidates are buying is greater because of this data,\u201d Baer<\/a> says.<\/p>\n

Previously, a Republican candidate might have advertised on just one TV network but now \u201ccan advertise on four or five different networks to get greater efficiency and effectiveness in reaching their audience.\u201d The effect on Democratic candidates is even greater, with some using more than a dozen networks \u201cbecause of this rich data that\u2019s informing the buy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the compressed time frame of political campaigns, they have been leaders in the use of data targeting, particularly with the rise of digital media. But political spending is still focused primarily on TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cTV is still king in many ways,\u201d says Baer. \u201cIn large part because political spend happens between Labor Day and November. So it\u2019s a very condensed window of time, and in order to be effective in spending what turns out to be billions of dollars in aggregate, we need to do it in an efficient medium. And television is that medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, digital spending by political campaigns also is up to the tune of triple digits, according to Baer, citing data from Comcast Spotlight<\/a>, which marries its own data insights with voter data to help better target cable advertising at the local market level.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s a greater amount of digital inventory, and actually that\u2019s driven a lot by set-top box VOD inventory. So what we\u2019re seeing is the trend toward accessing cross-screen and following viewership to their other devices and modeling after their viewing habits, not just live television.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political advertisers also are harnessing household addressable advertising for more precise targeting of voters, according to Baer, who is President of FreeWheel Advertisers (formerly STRATA).<\/p>\n

All in all, she believes that the two-month campaign window represents an \u201caccelerated view\u201d of what\u2019s happening in television.<\/p>\n

“While TV marketing is undergoing tremendous change overall, in the context of political everything is accelerated. One trend that we’re seeing is that data-driven television is the future. I would say one of the main takeaways from the political spending season right now is that using intelligent data capabilities married with the right television inventory is going to skyrocket effectiveness for all advertisers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This series \u201cGrowing Brands and Driving Results,\u201d was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing \u201918 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video.\u00a0\u00a0Please find additional coverage here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO\u2014Driven by advances in data-driven targeting, political advertising on local cable television is soaring in advance of the mid-term elections. To FreeWheel\u2019s Joy Baer, it\u2019s a microcosm of what lies ahead for all advertisers. \u201cEmotions are running high. The good news is spend is running very high as well,\u201d already surpassing spending in the 2016 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":57112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[7591],"tags":[5267,5905,5967,7328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}