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Episode 2

Managing the Challenges of Political Advertising

Cover Art of How Agencies Thrive podcast

About This Episode

May 14, 2020

We discuss how agencies are overcoming the challenges of political advertising and delivering political ad campaign strategies quickly and efficiently.

Jeff King | VP, Advertising Arena

Nicholas Guistino | Director of Digital Media Buying and Operations, Arena Mail+Digital

Eli Bardikoff | VP, Sales StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

So there is a lot of data out there, that helps you make very good predictive models. I think the more difficult part is finding those people online. And as I mentioned, you know, using that first party data to actually hit those people with digital ads. And that’s why we use first party data as much as we can we max it out, because the models are so good. And they are, if we can get those people, they are absolutely the audience that we want to talk to. But we also recognize that we’re going to hit a with our first party data, where we can’t match any more than we have. And we can’t reach those particular people. We’ve matched any more than we are. And so we have to use other tactics. And really, we have a whole bag of targeting tactics and you have to use the whole back. You can’t rely just on first party or just on third party or just on demographics, or just on contextual you have to use them all and attack your audience, so to speak from different angles in order to really reach them completely.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:01:04)

Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.

Vitaly (00:01:32)

Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vitaly, and I’m the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Through our work at StackAdapt, we have learned that political advertising is very different than corporate advertising. And there are many things that marketers in each one of these industries can learn from each other. In this episode, we’ve invited arena, a political consulting firm to speak to both challenges and opportunities in the political advertising space. The conversation covered many great topics. But what really stood out to me was just how dynamic the nature of political advertising is. What I found fascinating is the speed at which they operate. Often there’s a time to go to market within hours, and maybe only run campaign for a few days. And what I found interesting is the importance of having in house programmatic experts who have hands on keyboard to take advantage of constantly evolving market opportunities. I think there’s a lot that marketers from other industries can take away from this episode to find creative ways to respond to market changes and competition quicker. Coming up is our interview with Jeff and Nick from arena.

Eli (00:02:31)

Thanks for joining us today. My name is Eli Barkoff. I’m the Sales Director at StackAdapt. And I’m joined today by our guests Nick Guistino and Jeff King from Arena. Today’s episode is going to be focused on digital advertising and politics, how it differs from traditional corporate advertising and the challenges that advertisers face when planning and executing political campaigns. Jeff is the vice president of arena, a digital and direct mail agency that specializes in political organizations and clientele. He started his career working directly on political campaigns work in several different roles before moving into the media and advertising consulting space, where he’s been focused on digital political advertising for 10 years now. Nick is the director of digital media buying and operations at Arena. He possesses a comprehensive background in digital media management and strategic planning with over 10 years of experience. Nick started his career as advertising career in New York City, later moving to Salt Lake City, working on clients ranging from healthcare to government CPG and financial verticals. I appreciate you both taking the time to join us today. When I was initially asked to host StackAdapt political advertising podcast, there was no doubt in my mind that YouTube would be the perfect guest. excited to have you guys share your thoughts and experiences within the political vertical.

Jeff (00:03:43)

Well, we’re glad to be here. This is awesome. We’re excited. Awesome.

Eli (00:03:46)

Yes, very excited, amazing, pumped for a great conversation. So I guess, you know, without further ado, I think, Nick, this first question, I’ll just kind of direct to you given your background, I’m curious to hear a little bit more about the differences in running political campaigns and corporate campaigns. And, you know, coming over from, you know, the more traditional corporate media space, you know, what adjustments you had to make, when moving into that political vertical.

Nick (00:04:10)

I would say the biggest adjustment is just really timing. In the more traditional space, you have more lead time to plan for a campaign say as healthcare, you have months to plan because you know, enrollment is four months away, or you know, your Christmas seasons coming up. So that’s when you’re going to get your holiday campaign ready. But Jeff, and I will get campaigns in terms of doing a media plan, and it’s due tomorrow, and you have to do all of this research, and you have like two hours to do it. Whereas typically, I used to have three months to do more research. So it’s just very fast pace, which is something I expected, but I couldn’t believe how fast things moved, and then how accurate we still are in terms of planning, getting everything going approvals and then executing and then it’s over a week later, potentially with a campaign.

Eli (00:04:54)

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I’m curious, does that change based off of like the type of campaign within the political space So we’re in April of an election year. You know, we’ve even spoken about a couple of campaigns for the upcoming cycle. But is it certain types of campaigns where you’re afforded a little more runway compared to you know, others?

Nick (00:05:10)

I think it depends. Jeff could probably speak to this a little more than I can. But you know, if different polling data comes back, or whatever organization is working in that specific state, or congressional districts see some sort of movement, they may want to get a campaign up sooner or you know, as, as in right now, we know 2020 is a major election year, there are some proactive pieces we can do in terms of reserving inventory across different channels for the fall election. But it just really depends on what data is moving things, it really can depend.

Jeff (00:05:38)

Often, even though it’s not right before an election, there are fundraising, reporting deadlines, or other kinds of initiatives that political organizations are working towards and have set, you know, some kind of deadline. And we have to be responsive to that. And frankly, there’s also just just how political organizations function all the time, even not necessarily during an election period, or the few months right before an election, is we move quick and how and how Nick described it is absolutely the truth. Everything happens so quickly. And you have to be thorough, but also you have to understand what is essential to include and what can you basically jettison right, what would be nice, but you don’t need it. And you have to let those things go. Because if you’re going to move quickly, you can’t do everything you would love to do you had a month or even several more weeks to plan and prepare.

Eli (00:06:37)

Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And that’s been my experience with pretty much every single political client I’ve ever worked with. So that’s that’s exactly what I’ve experienced as well, I guess, touching, expanding on that point, you touched on it a bit at the end there. But curious, other than the lack of time, like what other challenges does, you know, the fast pace of political advertising posed to you guys as marketers, Jeff, if you want to give this a shot?

Jeff (00:07:01)

I think that we have challenges that other advertisers have that or not in the political organization. I mean, we of course, have challenges on attribution, we can’t go and for good reason, we can’t go and say, Oh, this voter voted for this candidate. Right, your your vote, and the way you voted is private. And so how do we attribute what our advertising efforts are doing towards what success is being experienced? Or is happening? So that is a huge difficulty that we find challenging. And I think, from my understanding that a lot of advertisers find challenging no matter what your advertising, I think that, you know, there’s a lot of scrutiny on political advertising to and how it’s being advertised, and what can be said or not. And that’s not exclusive, of course, to digital advertising only, and print advertising and TV and radio advertising, political, TV, and print and radio advertising have been scrutinized since their inception. But digital advertising, of course, provides a lot of new tools, especially as relates to privacy. And so those are other challenges that we have to keep in mind, and help our our clients and our end political advertisers we work with navigate properly in view of the audience they’re trying to reach.

Eli (00:08:21)

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I got actually a couple follow up questions based off of a couple different points that you mentioned there. You know, obviously, you’re not afforded the luxury of, you know, true attribution in the sense of saying, we reached this person with an ad and, you know, they voted for person XYZ. I’m curious what what metrics do you guys fall back on in the political space? When true, say like sales lift metrics that might be afforded to you and other verticals aren’t available?

Jeff (00:08:48)

First, I think that it’s important for us to look at the overall goal of what is what political advertisers are trying to do, and that is primarily to win elections. And so ultimately, even though we can’t attribute one specific media channel or one specific tactic over another, as leading people to vote, and leading to election victory, we really do try to look at that. And so tools that are that are used, of course, in electoral politics, like other industries are, is polling, you know, did a message move the audience and if the message moved the audience, can we tell where they saw it or what combinations of places they saw. So that really is important and other, you know, going down the funnel. Other tools that help us of course, are studies that help us see if we saw a lift in brand awareness or a lift in persuasion movement favourability for or against a particular client, or candidate. So those big picture tools really can help us understand if we’re being successful or not, even though we can’t It specifically say oh, hey, this person saw this ad and then that the next step they took was they went to a polling location and voted or they mailed in their ballot and voted for us. We of course, can’t get that level of data. Because no one can you. It’s private information.

Eli (00:10:17)

Make sense. Nick, anything to add to that?

Nick (00:10:21)

Yeah, building on what Jeff said, you know, we, we also try to really help clients understand, like a narrative in terms of the data we can report. So when we’re looking at reaching frequency, you know, explaining to them that it’s built over the course of a campaign, or some of the formula that we have, where we can equate our digital reach and impressions to grips, which helps them understand holistically how the campaign fit into their overall campaign that may have included TV or radio. So adding those type of pieces in there. And then, like Jeff said, building on those lifts, type studies, seeing how those performed, because we can’t even look at your typical, you know, website analytics, and a lot of ways like, yes, we have Google Analytics. But if I’m trying to get someone to vote for Jeff, and I’m pushing out messaging that’s telling people what he’s about, they may not necessarily go to the website. So we really have to tell that story to a client. And it even affects how, you know, we’re doing other types of targeting and things like that. So we really depends on the campaign. But yeah, we do have to tell a story in a in a different way versus, you know, 10, people bought this product, and then they did this, or we, you know, we can’t measure foot traffic, like Jeff said yet, whereas, you know, you can measure if someone went to your local grocery store after seeing an ad. So it’s definitely a little more technical, even though it’s awareness in a lot of ways.

Eli (00:11:38)

Yeah, no, interesting. Probably more more so than any vertical political campaigns, you actually see net out to, you know, a real life effect. And that, like, as Jeff mentioned, is, you know, the actual election and the results, you know, building off of that first question about the challenges you face as a political American, or you mentioned something, Jeff about, you know, scrutiny over political advertising, you know, more so recently than, than ever, you know, even leading to several platforms, introducing new policies and restrictions on the types of campaigns you can run and the targeting tactics you can use to reach your audience. A little curious to hear from both of you. We’ll start it off with Nick, how this is changed your process from both applying and execution standpoint? And what challenges do you guys face in trying to navigate regulatory policies that you know, oftentimes even differ state from state or platform to platform.

Nick (00:12:25)

I would say it definitely keeps us on our toes. You know, every day, it seems like a different platforms coming out with new rules or regulations, but our team is very well versed on every platforms changes, and we make sure we are able to fully digest the changes, and then we brief our company as a whole internally. And then we educate all of our clients on what that means. And that’s by again, us really ingesting, what was told to us working with our reps, and then ensuring we’re laying out the plan moving forward on how to bring all of our clients up to the latest requirements that any of these platforms may have. And then also, we try to anticipate any future changes they may have, in terms of planning, it does change some channels and how we do certain things only in terms of like, if it’s a quick timeline, if a campaign needs to go live today, it’s like, Oh, are we able to get these guys registered and get everything verified for Facebook right now? Or, you know, if, if we’re going to run on this DSP? Do they have requirements? Now? How does this change how we would normally do things, but you know, like I said, the team is very well versed. And we’re able to rapidly respond to any changes that happen, you know, just been around since the beginning in terms of watching all these regulations come into place. But that’s just kind of my snapshot and seeing how our teams are able to take something ingested, and then really go out there and make it happen literally overnight, if they have to, even if it’s moving a mountain to make sure our clients can run on all the different platforms that have changed their rules.

Eli (00:13:53)

Interesting. Jeff has a field to be referred to that has been around since the beginning of political advertising.

Jeff (00:13:59)

Well, that’s that’s obviously not true. But I mean, I’ve been around and have seen, especially, you know, with platforms that we are all familiar with, as members of our society, like Google and Facebook, we’ve seen those platforms change in so many ways and how they’re used. And of course, that affects politics, and how political advertisers use those platforms. And there, those platforms, as we’ve all seen in the news, are very responsive to the public and how the public perceives them. That’s their business. So yeah, there has been a lot of changes. And I want to emphasize what Nick pointed out. If you’re a political advertiser listening to this, the biggest takeaway I would hope you take away is that it does require a lot of attention and a lot of practice, being able to understand ingest, and then relay all of these policy changes. And these policy changes happen sometimes within weeks of the last policy change. So We at Arena have built a very robust, specialized team of ad buyers and ad ops professionals that are familiar with all of these platforms, they’re in these platforms every single day, they know the exact policies for each of these different platforms. And they understand when when a change happens, exactly what that will mean what what the nuance of that change will mean for our political advertisers. I think that the people who suffer the most from all of these policy changes, and frankly, how quickly these changes happen are those who don’t have professionals in their corner who are helping them navigate all of these changes. You don’t have someone who is doing this day in day out on every single platform and every single digital media channel, it is very difficult to dive into in the middle of it.

Nick (00:15:54)

And I would add even one other thing, like Jeff was saying how we have all these experts on the team who can rapidly respond to these changes is that they are such experts that they’re able even to go to the platforms and be like, hey, has your team thought through this piece, because we’re running into issues here. And the platforms will come back and be like, Wow, we actually didn’t think of it that way. Like that is really great feedback that you gave us were, as you were doing this by yourself, like Jeff said, and you were having issues, they would just be like, oh, we’ll look into this for you. But our team has so much experience and it has worked with these platforms for so long, they really do have some weight behind any recommendations they may have in order to make sure these no rules work in terms of like, oh, I can’t upload this. Why is this happening, and the platform may go, Okay, we’re seeing that error on your site, thanks for the suggestion to make that run smoother.

Eli (00:16:38)

That makes a lot of sense, and can certainly attest to how large and knowledgeable the arena team is when it comes to navigating the landscape. Curious if there are specific things that make you guys choose whether to use one platform or another, you know, given how many you do work with.

Jeff (00:16:57)

I think that one thing, which is so incredibly important, is having a very responsive team of representatives from the platform or vendor that we are using. So as we just discussed, we have a large team of experts who know exactly what they’re doing. And all of these different platforms don’t need someone to manage the process for them. But when we run into a problem, we’re running into a hurdle, we have to respond, as we’ve talked about with with local advertising very quickly, we can’t wait one day or two or three days to get creative reapproved or to figure out why we’re not scaling, getting enough inventory. Because we may only have one week to do an advertising app. So having a very responsive team is extremely important to us, when we choose partners to work with. You mentioned, you know, two, three questions ago about different attribution tools.

Eli (00:17:53)

And you know, what you guys use to measure sentiment and see if there is a change or a lift in perception. Interesting point, I think, especially relevant given that, you know, digital advertising is rapidly evolving space. Seems like every couple of years, there’s a new attribution or verification tool or a targeting method, or, you know, even different inventory types that kind of surge to the forefront. curious to hear where political advertising stands when it comes to innovation, from the political clients I’ve worked with, it’s always felt like campaigns have been highly technical and, you know, fairly cutting edge to add on to that. And is political advertising, in your mind, like on the forefront when it comes you utilize a new technology? Or do you think it follows suit when following where the corporate method goes?

Nick (00:18:45)

Yeah, I would say it’s definitely at the forefront, just from what I’ve seen, in terms of like coming from the other side of the table. You know, there’s a lot of money in politics. So you can naturally try out new tools. But also you need talented people to one recognize these tools and how they work with their clients. And to be able to implement them a lot of clients are, you know, looking at using Nielsen products, whether that’s their total ad ratings, or their digital ad ratings, they’re looking at using different brands, study tools, from YouTube and other vendors there. And then they’re even getting very creative or our team is getting very creative in terms of like different retargeting strategies, you know, since like I mentioned previously, we’re not just driving someone to a website and retargeting them off that. So the way we handle different audiences and do different retargeting models off of that is, I think, more complex than what some companies are doing now on the more traditional advertising side, and even handling data, you know, we’re starting to target audiences, you know, beyond the the cookie and a lot of ways because we’re the first industry truly getting that taken away from us, you know, in terms of using first party or certain cookie level data there. So we are at the forefront in many ways in terms of how our campaigns are planned and then and then how they’re executed in that very Fast moving timeframe.

Jeff (00:20:02)

I love this clip. And I’ve thought about this question. Often throughout my career, as I’ve spent so much time helping political advertisers, I’ve thought How do their circumstances differ from the circumstances of other types of advertisers. And honestly, I’ve come to the conclusion that I think, in some ways, and in many ways, the political industry, the political advertising industry is cutting edge and doing things like Nick just explained that other companies are not doing and they’re doing it in response to the circumstances they’re placed in, they have to do it, they’re forced to innovate using tools that are not necessarily custom made for their purposes. But they have to take something that might be made for, you know, some kind of brand lift study or audience segmentation that’s made primarily for other types of advertisers, and just make it work for them. And on but on the other hand, the political industry, sometimes we suffer, our political advertisers suffer from not having a lot of time to plan things out over quarters and years and make these massive investments. You see some political organizations doing that, you know, presidential campaigns, and large political action committees can often do that. But many times, advertising clients, or political advertisers really only exist for a few months. If you begin a campaign. By the time you end that campaign, you might have only had one year or less go by. And so sometimes we were not able to do things that larger, ongoing brands can really invest in. But again, as Nick explained very well, there are so many things that we are forced to do by circumstance that really help us lead.

Eli (00:22:02)

And I think that a lot of other advertisers could look into, and gain a lot of insight about what political advertisers are doing with the imperfect tools in hand expanding on that point, as well, because they’re a, you know, third, like a third party attribution tool or targeting tool that you guys have kind of molded to fit your purposes, that’s, you know, worked really well for you guys.

Jeff (00:22:17)

We use, I mean a plethora of different tools. Again, nothing has been there’s no one solution that really has solved all of our problems. We’ve mentioned a few times we’ve referenced a few times in this conversation, different types of studies, often referred to as Brand Lift studies, we have used tools, from organizations or companies like Nielsen and cantar, to help us understand our digital reach and frequency across multiple channels that can help us attribute what we’re doing to end results. But none of that none of these solutions are perfect. And so and I want to go back to what Nick was was talking about earlier in this conversation, where we need to provide a narrative to our clients. And I think this is obviously true of all advertisers, and all agencies and all consultants, not just political advertisers or agencies like ours, but we have to take all of these different elements and stitch them together to get a picture of what’s happening and and help our clients understand what that picture mean, what is the narrative of what’s happening here. And so those are some of the tools that we use. But certainly, I want to emphasize that you bring all those together, you understand you evaluate it and try to understand it the best you can and then help it put it into a narrative for your clients.

Eli (00:23:42)

Yep, that makes perfect sense. It’s interesting, the parallels there, you know, between the political space and you know, even the corporate or branded side of things where, you know, at the end of the day, I feel like every single marketing campaign at the end comes down to that narrative and how you can make sense of what you’re seeing online and how people are interacting with your message. So something that came up a little earlier, as we were chatting was, you know, targeting so we just chatted a lot about attribution and different third party verification tools that you guys kind of mold and adapt to fit your needs. But I’m curious to hear a little more about targeting because that’s obviously a hot topic of conversation, specifically when it comes to political advertising. But I think, you know, our industry as a whole is changing how we how we view privacy and how we view you know, the right to reach certain people based off of whatever attributes it may be. Curious what tactics you guys find most effective and, you know, you leverage most often for your political campaigns. Nicholas, start with you on this one.

Nick (00:24:43)

I would say what we see clients want to use the most is first party data, you know, they they work with state parties, local parties, you know, they they know who’s voting. They know the models that say if we get this segment out, it may increase voter turnout, so they want to use first party as much as they can, but with certain players in the space like Google and Hulu, and some others, even, you know, DSPs, kind of talking about changing certain things, we’re starting to see a little bit of given that. So their first instinct is to use first party. And that’s what we’ll use a lot of times. But then we’ve worked with partners such as StackAdapt, to also see any overlap. If we are using a third party segment, if we’re targeting, say, Republicans on a third party segment, we want to see what the overlap looks like with a first party segment. So we’ll use that as a secondary piece there to help us expand our audience, but also see like where there’s overlap. And then on platforms such as Hulu and YouTube, you know, we will utilize their quote unquote, first party that they built internally, based off of their own data, whether it’s people watching certain shows on Hulu, or what people content people are consuming on YouTube. So that’s another piece that we will use there. But I would say just to wrap up, my thought is we use we utilize first party data the most and then we’ll go into that blended if we can, third party and first party as long as the match rate is ensured there. And then the third piece that just kind of floats around there is when we have to we’ll use Google and Hulu segments where needed. But that’s pretty much how it breaks down.

Eli (00:26:21)

In terms of what audiences were using the most targeting, yeah, makes makes sense. And something I think is interesting, if we could potentially expand a little bit more on that is, I find when I speak to, you know, most clients outside of the political space, when they talk about first party audience, oftentimes, it’s like a CRM list that they’re uploading, you know, obviously, politics doesn’t necessarily use the CRM space. And you know, as Jeff alluded to earlier, you can’t necessarily see who’s voting for who and rightfully so. But you can see who’s voting through the voter file, because that is public information, open to learn a little bit more about the types of models that you guys, you know, work with to determine which way someone may be leaning based off of whether they voted or not, Jeff, is, you’re able to chime in on that.

Jeff (00:27:07)

Yeah. And then Nick nor neither Nick nor I are data scientists, we’re not these models. But of course, we are familiar, we work with the data scientists and analysts who do make these models. And they use 1000s of attributions to come up with their models, towards how likely is someone to actually just show up to vote? What kind of ideology and where are they on an ideological scale, or partisan scale, these are all different things that they’re trying to predict, as well as, I mean, when you think about it in an election, and as you said, Eli, you can tell how many people voted. And of course, you know, the end result, you know, which percentage voted one party or another party or one candidate or another candidate. And so there is a lot of data out there, that helps you make very good predictive models, I think the more difficult part is finding those people online. And as Nick mentioned, you know, using that first party data to actually hit those people with digital ads. And that’s why we use first party data as much as we can we max it out. Because the models are so good. And they are, if we can get those people, they are absolutely the audience that we want to talk to. But we also recognize that we’re going to hit a with our first party data, where we can’t match any more than we have. And we can’t reach those particular people. We’ve matched any more than we are. And so we have to use other tactics. And really, I think Nick explained this, well, we have a whole bag of targeting tactics, and you have to use the whole back, you can’t rely just on first party or just on third party or just on demographics, or just on contextual, you have to use them all, and attack your audience, so to speak from different angles in order to really reach them completely.

Eli (00:28:59)

Tickets. That’s fantastic. I really couldn’t agree more, you know, from my own experience, which is much less experienced than you guys, when it comes to political campaigns. I’ve always been impressed with like the level of sophistication and thought that goes into, you know, creating these audience tactics, whether they be first party third party, or you know, some other source for these political campaigns that we’ve run in the past. Nick, I got a question for you as well, just given that you mentioned that political is like the first vertical to see the cookie go away. And I think that’s going to happen pretty much across the board, especially with Google’s announcement of phasing out support for third party cookies over the next two years. What effect do you think they’ll have on political advertising? How does that change how you guys leverage first party data or targeting in general? curious to hear your thoughts there?

Nick (00:29:49)

I definitely think it will change things a lot. One being that you know, clients may start talking to the Googles and Hulu’s of the world and really asking them, What is the makeup of this data? I think that will be the big thing is they’re not going to be hesitant to use it. But they want to know like, Hey, does that even look like the audience we’re trying to get into? So I think that will be a major piece there. And then another piece will be, how well did they scale? You know, we want to see like, can we scale this in this small congressional district in Illinois, or in this other congressional district in Texas where things like that, because from our own personal experience, it seems like there are going to be some growing pains with the scalability of these audiences that YouTube and Hulu have put together. So I think that will be the big thing. I don’t think people are afraid to use it. They’re just kind of skeptical. Like I to be honest, I’m totally skeptical, because I want to know, like, is this the audience I truly want to reach? Or how are they modeling it because like Jeff said, our clients have data teams that really put a lot of time and effort and money into modeling these audiences, you know, whether they’re speaking to the oil and gas industry, or someone looking for solar or someone to vote for, or specific candidates. So I think that’s going to be the piece that hopefully the platforms will open up more about, you know, they don’t need to tell us that this is Eli, but they need to tell us all the attributes they use to build out this audience versus you know, just trust me. So more transparency overall, into the models that people are creating on their end. Exactly. Awesome. Jeff, anything to add? While we’re still on the topic of audiences?

Jeff (00:31:22)

No, I think that Nick explained it very clearly, we deal with a lot of those challenges. And I think that all advertisers should be thinking about these challenges and look to the political industry, or some indication of where the headwinds are.

Eli (00:31:38)

Makes perfect sense. Another thing I was hoping to learn a little bit more from you guys from is, you know, broadcast television has historically been a staple of all political campaigns, and it still is curious to hear a little more about how, you know, the explosion of CTV has changed how you reach your audience and plan your campaigns, you know, would you say that broadcast still is this gigantic force that it always has been or as CTV kind of pushed that to a little more digital, given that you’re able to leverage those models and those audiences that you create a little more effectively through CTV than kind of like that shotgun approach you use with TV?

Jeff (00:32:14)

Well, I think that, and this come and this is coming from me as a digital specialist, that, of course, the depth of TV is often overstated. TV is still very powerful. And we find that with our political advertisers, when we are coordinating our digital efforts with TV, that is when it works the best and is the most effective TV is still incredibly effective. And connected TV or over the top Ott, that is very important inventory for advertising. But it’s still maturing. And we have to realize that the large majority of connected TV or OTT content is not ad supported. And we’ve been actually struggling with really understanding the entire ecosphere, you might say, of Ott, and really helping our clients understand that. Yes, OTT is exploding, but and CTV and OTT are exploding, but we can’t advertise on Netflix, or HBO, or Amazon Prime, etc. Right? And so we have to still properly contextualize the ad supported OTT and CTV that we are dealing with. So I guess what I’m telling you is, it is really important, but I don’t think that CTV and OTT can replace traditional linear, or addressable TV right now.

Eli (00:33:42)

Yeah, that makes more sense. For sure. I think, in you know, at least in my opinion, where I, where I see it going is as less people, you know, as more people begin to cut the cord, perhaps TV overall will change, which will become more connected, I think, inherently and, you know, with that you might be able to, you know, target potentially more effectively based off of subscriptions to specific channels or networks, which are, you know, I guess, connected television, in theory, but it’s more akin to, you know, traditional cable subscriptions, but definitely, I don’t think TV is going anywhere anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Nick (00:34:21)

Yeah, I would. I would agree with that. And I feel like OTT is another tool in the tool belt, really when you think about it, because even some of the traditional buyers I’ve worked with and I still keep in touch with when we talk about it. It’s really like another tool in terms of like, oh, okay, we’re coming up into a political window in my state. I’m going to put more on OTT because cable and TV are very expensive, you know, because they still they know how to think holistically when looking at the campaign. They’re not just like, oh, TV and radio, these are my dollars. So it really does boil down to being that tool. And then you know, from our side like Jeff said, it’s there’s still a lot to understand it. It very much is the wild west in ways because you’re trying to get clients and you In your own self educated on, OTT is not just on your television, it’s on a mobile device, it’s on a tablet, or you know, what is full episode player?

Eli (00:35:08)

What’s this type of inventory? You know, how does this SSP come into play? Who are the publishers and everything? So we’re still constantly figuring out everything in this, you know, with this new product and how it’s evolving as it gets more and more attention, whether it’s from Ad Week or Ad Age, or, you know, these other advertising sources there. No, that makes perfect sense. And I think the you know, adoption of CTV is something that obviously, that’s relevant to political, but it feels like, you know, regardless of the advertising vertical urine, it seems like everyone is trying to learn and adapt how to leverage CTV and you know, how to make it, you know, work in tandem. You know, as Jeff mentioned, what works the best is when you work with your, your TV buyers, and you incorporate the television aspect into your digital strategy. I feel like that’s a common growing pain that pretty much every vertical is going through and trying to figure out what strategy works the best when trying to allocate, you know, dollars, kind of segwaying into other verticals and other another marketing channels. Curious if they’re aspects of, you know, political advertising, that you think are most valuable or applicable to those running, you know, more traditional brand focus campaigns, you’ve spoken a lot about, you guys kind of been on the forefront of innovation and kind of having to work with the tools that you got, whether that’s the platform, or the third party verification or attribution tools that you use, are there elements of you know, what you guys do day to day that you think, you know, would be beneficial from the corporate or branded side of things.

Nick (00:36:41)

So I would say, you know, one of the most valuable pieces for brand focus is, you know, really looking at your audiences and seeing how you can evolve them from there. You know, even if you have your own internal data, if you’re a brand, you may want to look at different segments or other psychographic ways to break things down, kind of similar to how political is moving beyond just looking at first party data, you know, we’re looking at psychographics, and pieces there. And then I think, understanding that, you know, some brands are doing this, where they’re looking at their campaigns holistically, but you know, moving more in that direction to understand like, hey, you know, Facebook may be doing really well, but it’s because of all this traffic coming in from your native ads, or other pieces that are working in that funnel there. And then I would say a big thing, too, that we’re looking at is really just how different ad units work here, you know, we’re utilizing native a lot more for with political clients, I think there’s a real opportunity there, because native can be a very high quality unit that could work well for brands, especially how you can buy them on engagements there. So I would say those pieces are something that could translate over but overall, you know, with political versus traditional, you’re still using the same marketing principles, and then your advertising principles when executing. So I think it’s just it’s some of those small tactics that can move over there. Awesome, Jeff, anything to add to Nick’s point there?

Jeff (00:38:06)

I think that, as you mentioned, all advertisers, regardless of their political or a big brand, or even just a mom and pop store, or service in your neighborhood, are using, and rightly so, using a lot of the same tactics, I think what you some that are not political advertisers could learn from what political advertisers are dealing with is to focus on the big picture, don’t get bogged down with your click through rate or, you know, view completion only. Those are important elements that you can take in combination with other signals to see if you’re being successful. But don’t get bogged down in small key performance indicator details really focus on are my efforts, resulting in success in the big picture. And if it’s not winning an election, if it’s selling more shoes, or movie tickets, or getting more people into your hair salon, focus on that and try to relate the money that you’re investing directly to the result as a holistic picture. Instead of trying to parse whether your Facebook ads or your Google ads or your native ads on some other supply exchange. Were the ultimate reason why you you are successful. With advertising. I think we’re all aware that it’s a combination. People need to see advertising and be exposed to advertising in different ways and in different places over a period of time in order to really make a decision and I think that many of us in the advertising industry have tried to make everything boiled down to eggs accurate and precise formula. But we do that without having half the equation available to us. And so it’s a fool’s errand. I think that we’ve learned that in political industry that we really are focused on the big picture of, we’re trying to win an election. So let’s see if our holistic efforts combined are contributing to the success of winning an election.

Eli (00:40:21)

Yeah, I love that big picture approach, it kind of all comes back to that that narrative and, you know, actual final outcome in the real world, not necessarily, you know, point 1% on your CTR increase or decrease, right? Yeah. We’ve spoken a lot about, you know, politic political campaigns, and you know, how you guys approach them and the challenges that you guys face, which is great, but I’m curious to hear a little more about something that’s, you know, fairly topical, as of now. So obviously, over the past couple of weeks, you know, the emergence of COVID, 19 has changed, you know, advertising overall, we’ve seen, you know, verticals like travel and tourism come to, you know, effectively a screeching halt. Curious what effect the current climate has had on political advertising, you know, what your prediction is, for the next couple months, given that we’re in an election season? Right. So that’s something that is just widespread, that affects just how people, you know, interact and move around. I’m curious to hear how you think this will affect digital campaigning overall?

Jeff (00:41:22)

Yes, thank you, well, I, I would be lying. And I think anyone would be if they could really definitively say or think they know what’s going to happen, things will change course. And I think what’s important to understand is that once we get out of this pandemic, and this phase of life, where things have changed so dramatically, we will, really, as a country, and as an electorate to care about this election. Of course, I think what this shows all of us is that elections really do matter. And who gets elected really does matter, and can affect our lives in our society. And so political advertisers who are going to spend money to message around this election, as well as the audience who is going to be tuning into this election and hearing and consuming these messages are, are all going to be engaged in. So I think political advertising is definitely not going away, and might be more intense and more important than ever, this election cycle cycle, then, you know, even a typical presidential election, which is, of course, incredibly intense, typically. So I mean, how with something’s changed, of course, messaging is going to change, we have a new issue that wasn’t on the table, just a few months ago, all campaigns, all political advertisers are going to have to take into account this issue and all of its many different consequences when it comes to elected officials and policies, and things like that. Also, it can, in a tactical way, can change a lot of things, right, some messaging may happen more digitally than in person, or, of course, sports and live TV has changed. And so that may affect where we’re trying to advertise and message to people, we’ll see what happens. But the one thing I do think is important to recognize is that this election is not going anywhere, that people are going to care about it. And because people care about it. The political advertisers who are trying to reach those people will be advertising.

Eli (00:43:31)

Yeah, very, very well said. Nick, anything to add to just one?

Nick (00:43:37)

Yeah, I think it’s been interesting seeing how politicians and then Super PACs, and everyone’s handled this whole situation, because you’re not going to just go running negative ad on a candidate out there. Because it just looks very tone deaf. But it’s interesting seeing some senators in some tough battleground states still use their airtime and put PSAs out there. So it’s, they’re still getting that brand recognition, while you know, being very in tune with the pandemic that’s going on right now. So super interesting to see that. And then, to your question, if there’s going to be more of a shift to a digital focus strategy, I think you’re gonna see people have to create more content that is more engaging, whether it’s ads, or, you know, if we’re trying to read about a candidate and things like that, because people are spending more time on their computers, but they’re also spending more time listening to their radios, to watching television and just engaging across other devices, I think content will still be king in that instant, you can’t just put boiler plate spots out there and buy some ads, I think you’re gonna have to cut through a lot more clutter, the longer this goes on. And then like Jeff said, the election is not going anywhere. So you’ll see people just keep stockpiling inventory and refining their strategy over and over again, same thing with their audiences.

Eli (00:44:50)

So now it makes make sense, you know, I guess in some kind of this pandemics kind of change everyone’s lives. It makes for perfect sense that would also change, you know how we launch marketing campaigns, how people interact with them. And, you know, regardless of the vertical for that matter as well. That’s pretty much wraps up all of the questions that I had, guys, anything else that you want to share? Before we sign off?

Jeff (00:45:16)

I will just want to say how much we appreciate talking with you about these things, Nick, and I talk about these questions in our own time, all all the time. These are things we think about all the time. And if there’s anyone out there who’s listening to your podcasts who’s interested in discussing these things, of course, they’re absolutely welcome. Reach out to Nick and me. And we love talking about these things with everyone.

Eli (00:45:45)

Perfect, and I’m happy to point those people in your direction as well. Appreciate you both taking the time to join us. This was super interesting and engaging and you know, hope that people listening to enjoy it as much as I did. Great. Thanks, Eli. Take care guys.

Vitaly (00:46:02)

Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things, subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you’re listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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