We’re rolling out three things that political advertisers should be thinking about this election year. In this piece, we are sharing how advertisers can leverage location data to develop a winning strategy.
It’s clear that mobile continues to be the device that people spend the most time with. Along with that comes the location data that is available through the location services function on smartphones. When users opt-in to sharing their data, we can get precise information on their physical, real-time location.
With this information, political advertisers can narrow down their constituents by town, city, county, state, or nationally and geofence the desired area to deliver hyper-geotargeted messages. This is incredibly useful when we look at campaigns based on the government office in which the candidate is running for. The strategy for a Congressional campaign versus a Mayor, Governor, or President will be vastly different in terms of the scope and who the target audiences will be. Political advertisers should work with a partner that has the capabilities to deliver campaign messages to the desired audience in the necessary location to avoid wasted ad spend on voters who are not applicable to your candidate.
As mentioned, in many instances, instead of heading out to the polls in large groups, we are expecting that voters will be sending ballots by mail at staggering rates. In New York State alone, nearly two million absentee ballots were sent out in advance of the June primaries. Through a partner that is able to deliver impactful mobile location-based ads, campaigns can reach voters at home who are receiving their Vote-by-Mail ballot and educate voters on your issues through effective messaging. This is a great way for advertisers to reach those constituents they know are planning to vote.
In case you missed it, check out our previous post on how best to reach audiences who will be voting by mail.