As we approach the 2024 election season, the advertising landscape is poised for tremendous growth, with political ad spending projected 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.Connected TV’s (CTV’s) share of political ad spending is set to jump from 2.7% in 2020 to 12.8% this year. The Harris campaign is leading the charge, allocating $200 million for digital ads, much of which will go to streaming platforms.
During this political campaign marketing season, effective audience targeting is crucial, as it holds the potential to sway voters, shape public opinion, and ultimately determine election outcomes. In this blog post, we’ll highlight political audiences that can assist political campaigns and organizations in connecting with their desired audiences in a meaningful and impactful way.
What separates Experian’s syndicated audiences
- Experian’s 2,400+ syndicated audiences are available directly on over 30 leading television, social, programmatic advertising platforms, and directly within Audigent for activation within private marketplaces (PMPs).
- 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 for activation in PMPs and directly on platforms like DirectTV, Dish, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk.
Three political campaign marketing audience categories
Over 240 politically relevant audiences are available on-the-shelf of leading TV, demand, and supply platforms to help your political partners gain share based on three political audience 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.
Political affiliations
Target audiences could include those who are likely to be in the Democratic, Independent, or Republican parties, or are likely to not be registered to a political party. Our political affiliation audiences use a foundation of voter registration data with Experian’s advanced statistical models to reach voters at scale, based on their political party.
Here are four audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their predicted party affiliation:
- Political Affiliation > Democrat
- Political Affiliation > Republican
- Political Affiliation > Independent/Other
- Political Affiliation > Unregistered
Political personas
One key target audience could be voters who are likely to be influenced by a political candidate’s renewable energy program. Additional target audiences could include those who are likely to be influenced by a candidate’s position on the economy or healthcare.
Here are 10 audience segments that you can activate to target voters based on their viewpoints on key political issues:
- Political Personas > Political Unregistered Liberal Leaning
- Political Personas > Political Unregistered Conservative Leaning
- Political Personas > Committed Democrats
- Political Personas > Moderate Democrats
- Political Personas > Political Leaning Liberals
- Political Personas > Liberal Leaning Independents
- Political Personas > Conservative Leaning Independent
- Political Personas > Political Leaning Conservatives
- Political Personas > Moderate Republicans
- Political Personas > Committed Republicans
To reach voters who believe the environment is a key political issue, you can layer in our GreenAware audiences with our Political Personas audiences:
- GreenAware > Behavioral Greens
- GreenAware > Think Greens
- GreenAware > Potential Greens
- GreenAware > True Browns
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Shopping Behavior > Smart Greens
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
Relevant ballot initiative audiences
You can also reach voters based on their attitudes and behaviors related to key ballot measures. Let’s walk through a few examples below and highlight relevant syndicated audiences that you can activate during the 2024 political campaign marketing season.
Local and national ballot initiative support
Consumer behaviors are often great predictors of down-ballot initiatives. For example, military families may show favor toward initiatives supporting veterans, households with children present may show more interest in school funding, and those interested in the environment will favor green initiatives. Experian offers an array of consumer behavior and interests audiences to help you fine-tune your targeting and messaging strategies.
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Occupation > Military – Active
- Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 0-18
Charitable causes
Understanding where consumers are actively donating to charitable causes paints a clear picture into their political interests.
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Charitable Causes > Contributes to Political Charities
- Consumer Financial Insights > Discretionary Spend – Donations > $1,000-$1,999
Demographics
Demographics play a critical role into voter opinions with presence of children, age, and household income influencing decisions at the polls.
- Geo-Indexed > Demographics > Household Income: $50,000-$74,999
- Geo-Indexed > Demographics > Education: Bachelor Degree
- Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 10-12
- Demographics > Marital status > Single
- Demographics > Ages > 19-24
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Moms, Parents, Families > Mothers with infant child(ren) (0-3 yrs old)
Millions of campaign dollars were wasted in the 2022 midterm elections when voters were targeted with ads for issues and candidates they couldn’t vote for. Using advances in geo-targeting can help save wasted spend and ensure relevant messages reach the right voters.
Finance
Income and large financial decisions often trigger changes in perspective and influence voter behaviors.
- Financial FLA Friendly1 > Income > $1,000-$24,999
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market New Mortgage
- Financial FLA Friendly > In Market Auto Loan
Media consumption and engagement
Media consumption and engagement offers great insights into how voter interest, current channel engagement, and engagement in political issues.
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences > Engagement Channel Preference > Email Engagement
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences > Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV
- Social Media > Snapchat
- Purchase Transactions > Ad Responders > Digital
- Television (TV) > Ad Avoiders/Ad Acceptors > Ad Acceptors
Mosaic
Proprietary persona-based audience solution that combines demographic and behavioral data to create a holistic view of voters and their interests.
- Mosaic – Personas – Lifestyle and Interests > Group O: Singles and Starters > O55 – Family Troopers
Occupation
Provides the opportunity to deliver targeted messaging on measures based on a consumer’s occupation.
- Demographics > Occupation > Management/Business and Financial Operations
- Demographics > Occupation > Sales
- Demographics > Occupation > Farming/Fish/Forestry
- Consumer Behaviors > At-Home: Retired/Empty Nesters
- Consumer Behaviors > Occupation: Education
Personal views
Understand consumers personal views around family, their social and work life.
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Work Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Family Centered
- Psychographic/Attitudes > Personal Views > Social Isolation
We can help you match your message to your audience
With Experian’s political audiences, you can confidently execute your political campaign marketing, knowing our audiences are based on voter registration data and advanced predictive technology. Our highly accurate models are validated by our expert audience team to ensure precise targeting and drive impact and influence with the right audience. We understand that finding a trusted data provider can be a challenge, which is why we make it easy to access our syndicated audiences.
For a full list of all of Experian’s syndicated audiences, download our syndicated audiences guide.
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
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
With the emergence of email addresses as a currency for brands to communicate with their consumers offline; attaching email data to in-store purchases lays the groundwork for future advertising strategies. However, this advantage in having an additional digital touchpoint also creates a new challenge for marketers. How do they connect what they know about their customers via offline data and PII, or personally identifiable information, with what they want to know about their online behaviors and interactions? Taken a step further, how can they create actionable strategies that connect these two streams of consumer insights in order to drive them to make more future purchases; and even become loyalists? At a time when the shift from traditional to online shopping feels more like a landslide; connecting online and offline data has never been more valuable or more urgent. The solution for these marketers lies in the framework of identity resolution; and a key capability called hashed email onboarding. Hashed email onboarding is a privacy-safe way to connect consumer email addresses to their related digital devices and other digital identifiers. The methodology prevents the consumers actual email address from being readable; while still providing marketers a connection between those emails and other touchpoints for an individual. Instead of understanding the customer journey in two distinct parts; how they interact with a brand or company offline and separately how they interact with a brand online; hashed email onboarding allows for the two parts to be woven together in a holistic view of that consumer. The power of connecting these data sets can be seen when combining offline and online attribution and measurement to improve frequency capping and look-alike modeling. It’s important to note that not all identity resolution vendors that onboard hashed emails function in the same way or provide the same level of data. Some connect only to desktop or only to mobile devices; while others don’t actually make direct linkages at all- they simply provide the hashed emails as a targetable digital audience for upload. While hashed email onboarding and the connection between offline and online data is a powerful strategy; it needs to be as structured as possible across the most data available to reveal truly efficient targeting and measurement strategies. Tapad, a part of Experian has built a hashed email product feature that works with the existing flexibility of The Tapad Graph to deliver the most holistic consumer view in the structure that works best for your business objectives. Get in touch
To our valued customers and partners, it’s been an exciting week here at Tapad! As announced in a press release this morning, Tapad is now a member of the Experian family. We’re thrilled to continue to grow as a leader in identity resolution under the umbrella of a global expert in data, analytics and technology. Tapad and Experian are deeply connected by our commitment to serving the needs of our customers; and with a focus on quality of the data we provide, we have a common goal for the future of identity in the advertising ecosystem. As part of this announcement, we wanted to assure you, our valued customer, that we remain deeply committed to serving you today just as we always have. Nothing will change in your daily operations with Tapad. Experian immediately recognized that the success and growth of Tapad was directly tied to the strength and depth of its team members. As such, the acquisition will not result in any changes to day-to-day contacts at Tapad, or processes with weekly graph deliveries and other product support. Experian’s faith and investment in Tapad’s future and the future of identity resolution underscores what we’ve always believed our products could achieve and that we will be able to continue serving brands, advertisers, publishers, and the advertising and marketing ecosystem for years to come. On a personal note, I am excited to be transitioning my role as Chief Operating Officer of Tapad to the General Manager position of a global business that’s achieved exponential growth over the past several years; culminating in this strategic acquisition that will no doubt bring even more value to our customers in the future. We remain committed to open communication and welcome any questions you may have. Thank you,Mark Connon | General Manager, Tapad Contact us today
Addressable TV has been through a transformation in the past year. Streaming content has become the most coveted space for creators and advertisers with the rise of new apps and platforms; but the influx of stay-at-home orders around the country have shifted television viewership as we know it, and streaming apps are popping up in droves to take advantage. So, how can you? With no shortage of opportunities to advertise on addressable TV and CTV, how does it fit into the media mix? And furthermore, how can you attribute this household-level device into your overall strategy? Tying it all together Layering addressable TV within digital ad campaigns couldn’t be easier today — but applying the right targeting and cadence between all of your digital efforts; and tying them together in attribution takes the right kind of data. Marketers can use CTV identifiers coupled with other device identifiers available in The Tapad Graph to not only target impressions but also map addressable TVs within the consumer journey; and unify strategies between household decision makers to better personalize messaging. 1 The Trade Desk Q2 2020 Earnings Call Transcript, August 2020; 2 iSpot Report, via Deadline, July 2020; 3 Flixed.io, January 2020 Contact us today