By Virginia Townsend
The midterm election of 2018 was one for the record books. Democrats were able to clinch the majority in the House of Representatives. An estimated 113 million people went to the polls and cast their ballot, making this the first midterm election in history to exceed more than 100 million voters. Barriers were broken as several minority candidates won seats in the House, Senate, and several other federal and state government positions. One medium in particular that was an asset to campaigns at all levels of government was the use of digital advertising.
Here at Division-D, we saw abundant success with several of our political partners in the months leading up to the election. By providing a variety of different environments for advertisers to choose from, we were able to spread the messages of these campaigns to large and varying audiences. Our in-house media buying team lent a hand in securing contextually relevant publisher partners to reach the target audiences of these political campaigns. There are a couple of tactics that proved to be especially effective.
First, Connected TV (CTV) was a top performer this election season. Trends in the digital advertising world have recently shown that audiences are more attentive and motivated by more captivating ads, like CTV, than with previous, more traditional methods - and that was something that held true for many political campaigns. CTV placements allow advertisers to effectively reach their target audience in a new platform.
Another way Division-D stood out amongst the rest was our ability to focus on hyper-local markets. Due to the nature of midterm-election issues, political parties and candidates focused on reaching their audience through local newspaper and broadcast sites. Our team has long-standing relationships with news and broadcast groups across the country, which provided scalable reach in all markets. Combining this specific targeting method with newer, more captivating ad units proved to be an effective tactic for all campaigns.
As a recent graduate, with a dual degree in Strategic Communications and Political Science, I was astonished at the impact that digital advertising had for our advertisers, our publishers, and the audiences we reached. People from all different areas of the country, different sectors of the economy, different ages, races, religions, and ethnicities saw these ads, and some of them were impacted enough to get out and vote. Division-D has seen political advertising trends change throughout the years, and likely will change again by the time the next big election comes around. By keeping in tune with the changes and being ready to best adapt and bring the best results for our partners, we can surely generate even better success for election campaigns in the years to come.
