While you're probably as tired of hearing about the election as the next guy, there are some interesting tidbits coming out that demonstrate that those apparently endless and certainly tireless broadcast ads through which everyone suffered will increasingly move online and target individual consumers in the future.
The latest statistics show that the winning Obama campaign spent double the amount of money on online ads--$52 million versus $26 million--as the losing Romney campaign in the last election. And winning always seems to breed more of whatever is believed to create the victory, so it appears that online advertising is going to blossom in the future.
While broadcast spending still far outstripped online, this was really just the first time online video demographic targeting was used in a presidential campaign, said Kelly Ford, vice president of marketing at SundaySky. But she told Streamingmedia.com it certainly won't be the last time.
"For political campaigns, to put relevant video in front of the right person is what a candidate's campaign team wants more than anything else," she said.
According to the story, strategy firms like the Democrat's DSPolitical and Republican's CampaignGrid used marketing techniques such as matching individual preference data to voter rolls and serving political pre-roll ads to different groups based on that data. In short, the campaigns tailored their messages based on known audience data and a supposed predilection on the part of viewers to appreciate the message.
It is, Ford told the publication, something that's only beginning in the world of advertising.
"The level of relevance of these ads, what they did with those campaigns, is just scratching the surface," she said. "From our experience, targeted pre-roll ads from a performance marketing perspective are more effective than any online video or online display advertising investment that a brand can make."
In the case of the Obama campaign, it may have made a difference in the end result.
"I'm sure that they feel they got their ROI on that," Ford said.
For more:
- Streamingmedia.com has this story
Special report: In the online video race, Obama's got Romney beat
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