At A Glance
Political advertising spend is increasing across digital, connected TV (CTV), and programmatic channels as the election cycle progresses. Experian’s political audiences help political campaigns reach voters using party affiliation, issue-based personas, and ballot initiative relevance. These segments support geographic accuracy, message alignment, and cross-channel activation across major platforms.In this article…
Political advertising trends shaping campaign strategy
Political advertising is entering a high-growth cycle as the 2024 election season ramps up. Political ad spending is expected to surpass $10 billion; with Kamala Harris entering the race, spending priorities have moved, especially in key states like Ohio, where the Senate race alone has already seen $300 million in ad spending.
CTV is capturing a growing share of that investment. CTV’s share of political ad spending is projected to increase from 2.7% in 2020 to 12.8% this year. The Harris campaign, leading the charge, allocating $200 million for digital ads, with a significant portion committed to streaming platforms.
With more money flowing into more channels, effective audience targeting has become crucial in political marketing. The ability to reach voters based on behavior, geography, and media habits can influence perception, guide engagement, and impact election outcomes.
Three political campaign marketing audience categories
This article outlines three political audience segments that can help political campaigns and advocacy organizations align messaging with voter priorities, behaviors, and geography.
More than 240 politically relevant Experian Audiences are available across TV, demand-side, and supply-side platforms. These audiences support campaign planning and activation across three core categories:
- Political affiliations
- Political personas
- Relevant ballot initiative audiences
Let’s break down each category and which audiences you can use in your political campaign marketing to target voters this upcoming election season.
Our political affiliation audiences help your campaigns connect with voters based on likely party alignment or registration status. These audiences are built using voter registration data combined with Experian’s modeling techniques, allowing campaigns to reach voters at scale. These audiences are often used as a foundation, then layered with geography or issue-based attributes to refine reach.
Here are four audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their predicted party affiliation:
- Democrat
- Republican
- Independent/Other
- Unregistered
How to use these audiences
A campaign organizer or media strategist can activate Independent/Other to reach persuadable voters who are not strongly tied to a party, particularly in competitive districts.
Our political persona audiences’ model political affiliation and ideological leaning, helping your campaigns understand where voters are likely to fall across the political spectrum – including committed party members, moderates, and those who lean without formal affiliation.
Here are 10 audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their viewpoints on key political issues:
- Political Unregistered Liberal Leaning
- Political Unregistered Conservative Leaning
- Committed Democrats
- Moderate Democrats
- Political Leaning Liberals
- Liberal Leaning Independents
- Conservative Leaning Independent
- Political Leaning Conservatives
- Moderate Republicans
- Committed Republicans
How to use these audiences
A campaign organizer, policy director, or media planner can activate Liberal Leaning Independents to reach voters whose issue positions influence voting behavior more than party labels.
Issue-based audience layers that complement political personas
Political personas identify how voters think. Issue-based audiences help identify what motivates them. Campaigns often layer these audiences with political personas to align issue messaging with voter priorities.
Environmental issue alignment using GreenAware audiences
To reach voters who believe the environment is a key political issue, you can layer in our GreenAware audiences with our Political Personas audiences:
- Behavioral Greens
- Think Greens
- Potential Greens
- True Browns
Geographic and voting-pattern layers
To reach voters based on their regional voting patterns, you can use our new battleground counties and district audiences:
- Affiliation Switcher Counties
- Battleground Counties
- House Battleground Districts
- Democrat Counties
- Republican Counties
- Independent Counties
Ballot initiatives often hinge on everyday experiences, family structure, and local priorities. Experian Audiences help your campaigns reflect those realities in your outreach.
Local and national ballot initiative support
Consumer behaviors are often great predictors of local and national ballot initiatives. These behaviors help campaigns anticipate which issues are most likely to resonate within specific communities and households.
For example:
- Military households may engage with veteran-related initiatives
- Families with children may respond to education funding measures
- Environmentally engaged voters may support sustainability proposals
Experian offers consumer behavior and interest audiences that help campaigns align outreach, message framing, and issue emphasis with the everyday experiences that shape ballot initiative support.
- Military – Active
- Presence of Children > Ages: 0-18
How to use these audiences
A ballot initiative campaign manager or field organizer can activate audiences such as Military – Active or Presence of Children: Ages: 0–18 to align outreach with voters whose daily experiences connect directly to the ballot initiative.
Charitable causes
Charitable and advocacy causes often rely on donor participation and sustained financial support. Audience categories supporting charitable cause outreach and fundraising include lifestyle attributes, charitable giving behavior, household composition, and donation patterns.
- Contributes to Political Charities
- Discretionary Spend – Donations > $1,000-$1,999
How to use these audiences
A fundraising director or advocacy lead can activate Contributes to Political Charities to reach voters with a demonstrated history of political giving.
Demographic and financial context
Demographic and financial context, such as age, income, education, and household structure, influences how voters interpret ballot language, policy framing, and issue relevance. These factors shape how messages are received across different communities and life stages.
Demographic and financial audiences help campaigns apply this context by aligning message tone, framing, and emphasis with voter circumstances. When paired with geo-targeting, these audiences help reduce wasted spend and support delivery of relevant messages within the appropriate geographic boundaries.
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market Auto Loan
- Geo-Indexed > Household Income: $50,000-$74,999
- Geo-Indexed > Education: Bachelor Degree
- Presence of Children > Ages: 10-12
- Marital status > Single
- Ages > 19-24
- Moms, Parents, Families > Mothers with infant child(ren) (0-3 yrs old)
- Financial FLA Friendly1> Income > $1,000-$24,999
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market New Mortgage
How to use these audiences
A campaign communications or policy team can activate our demographic and financial audiences such as Geo-Indexed: Household Income: $50,000–$74,999 to adjust tone and framing of ballot language.
Media consumption and channel preferences
Understanding how voters consume media supports more effective channel planning. Media engagement audiences reflect preferences for streaming TV, email, digital video, and social platforms, helping campaigns match message format to viewing habits.
- Engagement Channel Preference > Email Engagement
- Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV
- Social Media > Snapchat
- Purchase Transactions > Ad Responders > Digital
- Television (TV) > Ad Avoiders/Ad Acceptors > Ad Acceptors
How to use these audiences
A media planner or digital strategist can activate Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV to match ballot initiative messaging with how voters prefer to consume media.
Mosaic® USA
Our Mosaic audiences are proprietary persona-based audience solution that combines hundreds of demographic and behavioral data points to classify all U.S. households into groups and types, creating a holistic view of voters and their interests.
- Mosaic – Singles and Starters > O55 – Family Troopers
- Mosaic – Cultural Connections > P56 – Mid-scale Medley
- Mosaic – Singles and Starters > O52 – Urban Ambition
How to use these audiences
A campaign strategy or insights team can activate Mosaic – Singles and Starters > O55 – Family Troopers to understand voters through a combined demographic and behavioral lens.
Occupation
Occupation provides important context for how voters evaluate ballot measures, policy proposals, and issue messaging. A voter’s work environment, industry, or employment status can influence how measures are perceived, particularly when policies affect jobs, education, agriculture, retirement, or economic conditions.
Occupation-based audiences help campaigns align messaging with professional context by tailoring language, examples, and issue framing to industries and work environments that are directly affected by specific measures.
- Management/Business and Financial Operations
- Sales
- Farming/Fish/Forestry
- At-Home: Retired/Empty Nesters
- Education
How to use these audiences
A policy advocate or outreach coordinator can activate Education or Farming/Fish/Forestry to tailor messaging around measures that affect specific industries or work environments.
Personal views
Understand consumers personal views around family, their social and work life.
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Work Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Family Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Social Isolation
How to use these audiences
A campaign organizer or messaging strategist can activate Psychographic/Attitudes > Family Centered to reach voters whose personal priorities influence how they interpret ballot measures.
What separates Experian’s syndicated audiences
Our syndicated audiences give you an advantage across channels, offering both scale and accuracy:
- Experian’s 3,500+ syndicated audiences can be sent to 200+ leading social platforms, such as Meta and Pinterest, TV, and programmatic advertising platforms, and activated directly within Audigent, a part of Experian, with private marketplaces (PMPs)./li>
- Reach consumers based on who they are, where they live, and their household makeup. Experian ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset for key demographic attributes.
- Access to unique audiences through Experian’s Partner Audiences available on Experian’s data marketplace, within Audigent, a part of Experian, for activation in PMPs, and directly on platforms like DirectTV, DV360, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk.
You can activate our syndicated audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. For a full list, download our syndicated audiences guide.
Where can you activate Experian Audiences?
Experian Audiences can be activated on 200+ leading social platforms, such as Meta and Pinterest, TV, and programmatic advertising platforms, and activated directly within Audigent, a part of Experian, with private marketplaces (PMPs), or found directly on over 30 platforms, including:
Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team, and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice.
You can activate political audiences across most major platforms, either directly or through Audigent PMPs, including select partner audiences shown below. For campaigns with specialized needs, our team can also support custom audience development and partner data collaboration.
Want to activate an Experian Audience on Meta, Pinterest, Snap, TikTok or on a platform not listed above? Contact us today.
Matching political messages with verified voter audiences
Political campaigns face pressure to reduce waste and prevent mismatched targeting, as recent election cycles show millions of dollars spent reaching voters who were not eligible or relevant to specific races.
Experian offers more than 240 politically relevant audiences, built on voter registration data and validated modeling, supporting responsible audience selection and geographic alignment. Our audience team reviews and maintains these segments to support relevance, scale, and compliance.
You can activate our political audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. Can’t find the audience you’re looking for or need a custom audience? Connect with our audience team for more information. Additionally, work with Experian’s network of data providers to build audiences and send to an Audigent PMP for activation.
Connect with our audience team
FAQs
Experian Audiences are pre-built, privacy-compliant consumer segments that help marketers target based on verified demographic, financial, and behavioral data. This includes more than 240 politically relevant audiences designed for flexibility across channels and can be activated on 200+ platforms, including major social, CTV, and programmatic partners.
Experian ranks #1 in demographic accuracy according to Truthset, and marketers can choose from 3,500+ syndicated audiences that capture signals such as income, spending behavior, household structure, financial attitudes, and ability to pay. These same audiences are also available through partnerships on platforms like DirecTV, Dish, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk.
For a deeper look at our audience catalog, explore our syndicated audience guide.
Three political audience segments that can help political campaigns and advocacy organizations align messaging with voter priorities, behaviors, and geography.
More than 240 politically relevant Experian Audiences are available across TV, demand-side, and supply-side platforms. These audiences support campaign planning and activation across three core categories:
– Political affiliations
– Political personas
– Relevant ballot initiative audiences
Political campaigns, advocacy groups, ballot initiative committees, and public affairs organizations use Experian’s political audiences to align their outreach with voter registration data, modeled attributes, and geographic boundaries.
Experian’s political affiliation audiences use voter registration records combined with Experian modeling to scale reach beyond file-based targeting and support activation across media platforms. In addition, Experian offers political persona audiences, which are built using modeled signals that reflect ideological leaning and issue orientation rather than formal party registration. Political personas help campaigns understand voting mindset and policy priorities across the political spectrum, including voters who lean without formal party affiliation.
Experian Audiences can be activated on 200+ leading social platforms, such as Meta and Pinterest, TV, and programmatic advertising platforms, and activated directly within Audigent, a part of Experian, with private marketplaces (PMPs), or found directly on over 30 platforms.
Experian’s political personas focus on issue orientation and voting mindset, while Experian’s party affiliation audiences focus on voter registration status. Political persona audiences support messaging tied to policy topics, economic priorities, and social issues, while party affiliation audiences are commonly used to align outreach with registered party status and base mobilization strategies.
Footnote
- “Fair Lending Friendly” indicates data fields that Experian has made available without use of certain demographic attributes that may increase the likelihood of discriminatory practices prohibited by the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”). These excluded attributes include, but may not be limited to, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, disability, handicap, family status, ancestry, sexual orientation, unfavorable military discharge, and gender. Experian’s provision of Fair Lending Friendly indicators does not constitute legal advice or otherwise assures your compliance with the FHA, ECOA, or any other applicable laws. Clients should seek legal advice with respect to your use of data in connection with lending decisions or application and compliance with applicable laws.
Latest posts
Marketers Using Centro’s DSP Basis Can Leverage Tapad’s Technology for Extended Cross-device Reach Chicago – May 15, 2018 – Centro, a provider of enterprise-class software for digital advertising, today announced that its Basis programmatic ad platform has licensed cross-device marketing technology from Tapad, a part of Experian, the company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer. Media professionals using Basis can now drive better performance by identifying a person across the different devices he or she uses, serving ads in the most optimum environment, then analyzing performance to see what ad worked best based on creative, device, location and time of day. Today’s digital media ecosystem is fragmented. People consume content on their multiple devices from multiple locations. According to digital analytics firm GlobalWebIndex, a typical consumer owns three digital devices and has seven digital ID’s active in the last 60 days. Advertising technology that treats every device as a single user would not be able to guide customers down the marketing funnel according to how users jump from one device to the next. Furthermore, they wouldn’t see when conversions occur on a device different from that in which the ad was first shown to the user. The Tapad Graph identifies the point of conversion across all screens – smartphones, tablets, home computers, and smart TVs – so that marketers can better gauge the efficiency and return on ad spend. “Our technology helps brands gain a deeper level of understanding of their customer, enabling marketers to better deliver services and products users want,” said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships, Tapad. “With our technology as part of Basis, Centro is providing robust, accessible tools for marketers that want to advance their knowledge of the consumers they want to reach.” Centro’s Basis enables advertisers to plan, buy and analyze real-time bidding (RTB), direct, search and social campaigns in a single platform. It is the only platform that combines all of these elements with cross-device conversion attribution and advanced reporting features in a DSP. With the Tapad Graph integrated into Basis, marketers can now identify consumers across all of their devices during any point of the consumer journey. This can help marketers determine ad spend effectiveness for optimizing campaigns in real-time or for the future. Other cross-device marketing capabilities for Basis users include: Frequency Capping: Apply frequency caps at a unique person-level rather than at a device-level to prevent saturating users with ads and showing them more impressions than desired. Audience extension: Expand the reach of a campaign by learning what other devices a single user may have, then deliver ads to single users’ other devices. Reporting insights: Learn how users interact with ads across their devices. Gain insight about how consumers respond on devices to improve targeting parameters. Conversion attribution: Record conversions on devices different from that in which the ad was displayed to learn the true effectiveness of advertising efforts. “Cross-device analytics and optimization aligns with our vision that converging the different parts of digital media to create a holistic view of campaigns will drive performance,” said Katie Risch, EVP of customer experience, Centro. “Having Tapad’s powerful capability of personalized marketing gives our advertisers high-quality data to cultivate relationships with customers, wherever they are in digital channels.” About Tapad Tapad Inc. is the marketing technology company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer through its identity-driven solutions. The company's signature Tapad Graph connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world's largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2018, Tapad introduced its Tapad Customer Data Platform (CDP), purpose-built to offer marketers a highly personalized and privacy-safe platform to convert first and third-party data into actionable, results-driven campaigns. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. Tapad's numerous awards include: Forbes' Most Promising Companies, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, Crain's Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award and Global Startup Award's "Startup Founder of the Year." Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group in 2016. Telenor Group is one of the world's largest mobile operators. About Centro Centro is a provider of enterprise-class software for digital advertising organizations. Its technology platform, Basis, is the first of its kind SaaS advertising solution unifying programmatic and direct media buying, along with workflow automation, cross-channel campaign planning, universal reporting and business intelligence. It boosts media, team and business performance by enabling advertisers to plan, buy and analyze real-time bidding (RTB), direct, search and social campaigns in a single platform. Contact us today
The concept of identity resolution has emerged over the years as a strategic imperative among marketers and technology vendors. A report by Forrester contends that accurately establishing and maintaining customer identity is one of the most perplexing challenges facing marketers today. Customers have footprints in the offline and online worlds and tend to seamlessly transition across various channels and devices – presenting a unique challenge to truly understand who they are. But the ability to stitch these disparate components of information together means marketers can make better decisions and have more meaningful interactions with their customers. And for customers, this means an experience with personalized advertising content more likely to resonate with them. Why should marketers prioritize identity? The ability to accurately identify customers is the most basic prerequisite for marketing analytics, orchestration and execution. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for brands and marketers planning to link together disparate systems of audience insights and engagement to foster a more seamless and personalized omnichannel customer experience. For example, if an advertiser can identify a customer’s interests, as well as how that person prefers to consume information, then the advertiser can create and deliver messaging that will resonate with the customer. However, like most competitive differentiators, the mission critical components to accurately determine an identity reside within the suite of identity management tools at the marketers’ disposal and the expertise required for proper execution – a struggle for most marketers. But when properly implemented, a comprehensive customer identity strategy can be among a brand or marketer’s most valuable and proprietary assets. Where to begin with identity resolution? With the convergence of CRM platform data, cross-channel online touchpoints, offline record linkage management, probabilistic cross-device graphs, and data onboarding—evolving from point solutions to unified platforms—marketers are faced with an increasingly complex set of challenges in addressing and solving for customer identity management. To properly implement from the get go, and to avoid having to bolt on disparate technologies down the road, emerging industry trends and success stories suggest marketers need a neutral technology service provider that can provide each of these solutions via a single, unified platform. A vendor that can build a solid identity management foundation comprised of omni-channel targeting and attribution, cross-device resolution, online-offline linkage management, and data onboarding form the nexus of a cohesive identity strategy, built to last. Experian helps connect consumer identity As a trusted name in data and information services for more than 40 years, we are committed to privacy by design and the responsible usage and security of data. Whether you’re a brand, agency, or publisher, Experian has the wide-ranging toolset to help you put people at the heart of your business and make better marketing decisions. By harnessing the power of the sum of these parts, fusing both offline and online identifiers and attributes, Experian has established a leadership position in identity management. If you're ready to begin building your identity foundation, contact us and get started today! Learn more about why identity matters to marketers and consumers, here! Contact us today
Partnership Yields Increased Match and Connectivity Rate Through Tapad Graph, acquired by Experian March 27, 2018 — New York, N.Y. — Tapad, part of Experian, is reinventing personalization for the modern marketer and today announced the impactful results of its strategic partnership with Flashtalking, the leading global independent platform for ad delivery, unification and insights. Flashtalking is one of Tapad's most engaged partners, using the Tapad Graph to unify cross-device engagement and identity-driven consumer behaviors for attribution modeling. The company leverages a unique identifier that, in conjunction with Tapad's Graph, provides robust multi-touch attribution solution for its clients. This partnership has resulted in above-industry match and bridge rates for Flashtalking and its customers. Overall, the Tapad Graph yielded a 71 percent match rate with 41 percent of converters engaging on multiple devices, highlighting the importance of cross-device measurement. Tapad’s identity solutions provide Flashtalking with a more holistic view of global engagement. Flashtalking marries ad server log file data with the Tapad Graph to connect all interactions in the consumer journey. This enables Flashtalking to provide more accurate and impactful cross-device attribution, which ultimately enables better optimization. These achievements have led to recognition of Tapad and Flashtalking’s work by the I-COM Global Forum for Marketing, Data and Measurement. “Tapad allows us to understand user engagement across devices and platforms at both the household or individual user level, which is extremely beneficial when providing marketers with true path to conversion and attribution,” said Steve Latham, global head of analytics at Flashtalking. “Since our relationship began, we’ve successfully leveraged Tapad data to provide more accurate, actionable insights that have helped numerous brands achieve substantial gains in media effectiveness.” Flashtalking client Michael Lamontagne, SVP of analytics and CRM at 22squared says “We are big believers in using cross-device insights to improve our campaigns. Flashtalking has been a strategic partner in the pursuit of that goal. By incorporating the Tapad Graph, Flashtalking delivers powerful insights into user engagement and media attribution across browsers and devices. Of equal importance, their bundled solution makes it easy and efficient, saving our team countless hours of busy work.” “Our ongoing work with Flashtalking has had a significant impact on the accomplishments we’ve achieved,” said Chris Feo, SVP, strategy & global partnerships at Tapad. “Being able to grow with a dedicated partner that leverages our proprietary technology in unique ways has helped us uncover the global impact our services can have on a business. We’re proud to drive success for Flashtalking’s clients on a global scale.” Contact us today