This week, I was talking to a state party official who oversees voter contact strategy. He talks to voters daily and has a pulse on the ground that political agencies miss when looking at aggregated data.
Political operators need to think more like people on the ground. Voters have their own lives, habits, and behaviors. They are not just aggregated data sets.
The best voter contact programs are already integrating channels. Let’s look at how Battleground Impact and Cross Screen Media are using texting and direct mail to align with voter habits.
How do we go beyond voter models?
I said last week that polling and modeling firms are the under-appreciated cornerstone of voter contact. Their turnout, persuasion, and GOTV models tell us who to talk to and when.
But polling is weaker at understanding where voters actually spend time with media because most voters do not consciously think about it.
Battleground Data addresses this using smart TV and viewership data to model media consumption at the voter level.
What percentage of voters aren’t seeing ads on the big screen?
Smart TV manufacturers decrease device costs by selling viewership data collected through the TV. We can see what programs and ads run on the TV and model viewership back to voters.
Every voter household is scored on Broadcast, Cable, and streaming consumption, including how much of that viewing is ad-supported.
14% of persuadable voters nationwide see no ads on the TV screen. This includes a portion of the 47M Americans who watch streaming but pay to remove ads.
How do we reach the unreachable voter?
We can’t rely on digital alone to reach these voters. To earn their attention, we need to use additional formats.
In every voter contact plan, we identify voters in our target audience who are unlikely to see TV or streaming ads.
We then increase frequency against those voters through persuasion texts and direct mail.
Finally, we report combined reach across every voter contact channel: Broadcast, Cable, streaming, direct mail, and texting.
Case Study: Integrated Voter Contact Results
Geo: Statewide
Goal: Persuasion
Media Mix:
Streaming/Digital: Fully funded
Broadcast/Cable: Light schedule due to geo waste
Texting: Fully funded with additional frequency to unreachable voters
Direct Mail: Unreachable and hard to reach voters only
Results: 96% reach, with no one medium reaching more than 64%
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Voter modeling must go a step further. Audience data is too important to campaigns to stop at the voter model; advertisers need to append data to understand viewership.
Work with vendors across channels. If you see a gap in reach, another channel can likely fill in.
Report combined reach. Siloed reach reporting is almost useless to campaigns. They are investing hard-earned money into voter contact, show the full results.