With elections right around the corner, political advertisers want to know the best way to reach potential voters. New data from Comcast’s Effectv unearthed that while advertisers can reach most voters via traditional TV, they can leverage streaming to obtain additional audiences.
Specifically, Effectv recommends political advertisers allocate 10-20% of their TV investment to ad-supported streaming, while dedicating remaining resources to linear TV advertising. That amount is slightly lower than what Effectv suggests as an investment for general advertisers – 20-30% of total video investment towards streaming.
For the study, Effectv analyzed over 200 political ad campaigns that ran during the 2022 primaries. In that time period, over 80% of political ads only ran on traditional TV.
Political advertisers face crunch time in the six weeks during primary season and eight weeks during a general election window, Dan Sinagoga, Effectv’s head of political sales, told Fierce Video.
Roughly 63-65% of political ad spending happens between Labor Day and Election Day, he said. That compressed window puts pressure on inventory across all types of screens. So, it makes sense for political advertisers to allocate less resources towards streaming than general advertisers would.
“There isn’t inventory out there from a streaming standpoint to be that ambitious,” he said. “Just because in that shorter period of time there’s not an ability to really cascade a reach campaign across [streaming] annually, like an automotive advertiser might do.”
Earlier this year, Effectv saw political advertisers overleverage against streaming, meaning they spent more money than they should have running campaigns on streaming platforms. Since then, Sinagoga said that money has been redistributed across linear resources, as “the bulk of that inventory still sits across the linear ecosystem.
The 10-20% benchmark is considered the “high point” for political advertising reach on streaming platforms, Effectv Director of Customer Insights Travis Flood told Fierce Video.
“As you put more into streaming, you’re basically sacrificing reach you could have achieved on linear,” he said.
But Flood pointed out advertisers can be flexible with the 10-20% allocation, depending on the audience they want to reach. Demographics-wise, it’s not as if older people are primarily watching linear while mostly younger people are on streaming platforms
“It’s probably on the light end of that 10-20% if you want younger votes under 50,” Flood said. “And if you’re going over 50, maybe it’s on the higher end of the 20% to streaming.”
“It’s not just the 21 and under demo that’s using streaming resources,” Sinagoga added. “You look at things like the Paramount franchise with ‘Yellowstone.’ There’s a significant 25+ and 50+ demo that’s streaming ‘Yellowstone’…because it’s only available on streaming.”
Political ads are creating more attentive audiences on both streaming and linear, per recent data from TVision. The firm found people are watching political ads 22% longer than other types of ads.
Streaming also helps advertisers obtain eyeballs from people who might be “light news” viewers. To classify those viewers, Effectv analyzed how often households consume cable TV news.
“The people on the high end of cable news, they’re probably watching it multiple hours per day,” said Flood, while “light news” viewers likely spend roughly 10% of that time watching the news.
Effectv’s study showed streaming impressions are 1.7x more likely to be seen within “light news” viewing households compared to traditional TV. Although over 70% of political ad dollars are spent towards news programming, Sinagoga points out, that doesn’t mean advertisers should only focus on obtaining voters through linear news channels.
“It really was on us to be able to find out where’s that lighter or ‘no news’ viewer, [advertisers] need to get them somewhere,” he said. Simply buying inventory across local broadcast and cable news channels like Fox, CNN and MSNBC was a good advertising strategy in 2010, but it doesn’t work in the current media environment.
“Now you can’t get away with that kind of buying mechanic and think it’s going to end up winning an election,” Sinagoga said. With political ad spend set to hit a record of $9 billion, according to Effectv, this election season, advertisers need to think of different approaches to reach untapped audiences.
“If you’re not looking outside the box to look at alternative areas to get a voter, there’s an opportunity for a miss there,” he added. “If you look to follow eyeballs where they’re at, that’s where the reach game is.”