Political Ad Market Offers Bigger Lessons

Every other year the media ad sales community gets to observe firsthand the strategic media phenomena that is political campaign advertising. While many of the variables in the political arena are unique, I believe that they offer valuable insights for all advertisers.

Consider the following:

Timing -- The first Tuesday in November (excepting the early voting process) is the ultimate, universal One-Day Sale. Virtually all in-market consumers reach for the voting lever at the same time. They have moved down the consumer purchase decision funnel together and they're all in the final purchase phase.

This means that timing issues are critical. As a rule in general elections, the campaigns will back plan from Election Day one week at a time. They will keep most of their weight as close as possible to the election event. In non-political advertising parlance this is a ringing endorsement of recency strategy, messaging the consumer as close to the purchase decision as possible. For many categories, this would mean continuous or seasonal exposure. Not so for political.

But that's for general elections. Special elections and primaries seem to have different rules. They can behave more like new product introductions than spending at the point of sale. Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts, took advantage of the low-key Democratic media presence to define himself on air as a fresh new face and establishment outsider.

This was both his introduction to voters and a potent fundraising tool. The late contribution surge allowed him to spend millions of dollars toe-to-toe with Martha Coakley -- her candidate war chest supplemented with issue group and party money -- in the last three weeks of the campaign.

Targeting -- The fascinating thing about political targeting is that it is a moving target. Early on and in primary elections the campaigns will tend to target the Very Liberal and Very Conservative wings of the electorate. These people tend to be more engaged and motivated. They are more likely contributors, participants, influencers, and voters. However, self-described Very Conservatives only account for 11.6% of the adult population and Very Liberals only 5%. These are not election-winning numbers.

As the campaigns develop on the way to Election Day, they will have to garner support from the Somewhat Conservatives (20.2%) and the Somewhat Liberals (10.9% of adults). And finally, in the crucial final weeks, most of the persuadable, undecided voters will be found in the Middle-of-the Road bloc, the largest single segment at 27.9% of adults.

Both MediaMark Research and Scarborough have excellent research tools that allow media planners to identify audiences' political outlook and affiliations by broadcast TV programs, dayparts and genres. This allows the planner to shift viewer targets and media choices while working through the campaign timeline.

The key difference between broadcast and cable is the ability to deliver the targeted viewers in the required volumes. Since targeting is by definition a reductive exercise -- focusing only a portion of the audience -- the low audiences delivered by cable networks at the local level become extremely small. Generally, broadcast TV programs, say, early news, will outdeliver the cable alternative, a cable news network, against targeted viewers by a factor of 10 to 20 to 1. This is a critical distinction because of the next consideration.

Share of Market --  As opposed to almost every other category in American elections, there is no second place. Improving your share of market, unless it's to a higher level than your competition, means nothing. Neither does ROI. In the 2008 election, the Obama campaign spent considerable more per vote than McCain. Obama's ROI on a total campaign expense basis was 28% higher; on a post-convention TV spend basis the cost per vote was 37% higher than McCain's. An ad agency procurement executive would give the win to the Republicans.

The fact of the matter is that despite the high levels of discussion about micro-targeting and segmentation, candidate advertising is a mass market business. In 2008, nearly 123 million votes were cast for congressional candidates. That's almost 60% of registered voters. How many other categories have that many in-market consumers? Very few.

This explains the need for broadcast TV's massive reach to convince and motivate voters across national, state, congressional district and city geographies. Political advertising experts know this and they vote with their budgets. Television -- local, national and cable -- got about two-thirds of all candidate-paid media spend in 2008. Local broadcast TV got about 80% of that. For 2010, from what we can see so far, this ratio will continue.

When the dust settles after Nov. 2, we are convinced that the bottom line will show that it was the campaigns that used the best breakthrough television messaging and placed the best breakthrough local broadcast TV schedules that won the vast majority of the time.