Late Stage Digital Ad Strategy for Political Campaigns

Summary

In the final stretch before an election, strategic digital advertising becomes crucial. Experts from DSPolitical share their best practices for leveraging programmatic advertising to optimize late-stage campaign efforts. The session sheds light on audience targeting, data utilization, and platform choices to ensure impactful advertising. It covers how to navigate the complexities of Facebook's ad restrictions and the importance of focusing on video and connected TV for maximum persuasion. Additionally, they provide guidance on efficiently managing last-minute ad budgets, ultimately aiming to maximize voter engagement and turnout.

Highlights

• Programmatic advertising transcends social media and covers nearly all internet spaces, including popular websites and apps. 🌐
• DSPolitical emphasizes the importance of using updated voter data for accurate targeting and avoiding wastage. 📊
• Misconceptions about digital advertising constraints close to election dates are addressed and solutions provided. 💡
• Facebook ad restrictions are discussed, highlighting the need for careful planning and diversifying ad platforms. 🔍
• Late-stage campaigns are reminded that video content remains a highly persuasive format. 📹
• Guidance on budget allocation focuses on efficient spend and leveraging programmatic buys for effective reach. 💼
• The value of non-skippable Connected TV (CTV) ads is underscored for compelling storytelling and voter engagement. 📺
• Campaigns are encouraged to continually update and diversify ad content to combat market saturation. 🌟
• Efficient targeting and exclusion of already-decided voters ensure optimal use of campaign funds. 💸

Key Takeaways

• Programmatic ads cover the entire internet and are essential in the final weeks. 📈
• Misconceptions about needing to sacrifice targeting as elections approach are debunked. 🎯
• It’s crucial to leverage data for precise voter targeting, especially for persuadable, low-turnout voters. 🗒️
• Facebook restrictions necessitate strategic planning and exploring other platforms, like CTV. 📺
• Video is a powerful tool—use it wisely and creatively to maintain engagement. 🎥
• Budget efficiency can be maximized by focusing on high-impact platforms and targeting strategies. 💰
• Dynamic ad strategies and fresh content keep voter attention high in saturated markets. 🔄
• Data-driven approaches to exclude voters who have already voted ensures resource efficiency. ✅
• CTV ads are unskippable, making them valuable for impactful messaging. 🖥️

Overview

In this detailed discourse by DSPolitical, the focus is on using digital advertising wisely during the crucial last weeks before an election. This involves the strategic use of programmatic advertising to outpace traditional social media efforts, ensuring ads appear across a wide array of online platforms, from news sites to gaming apps. The talk also tackled common misconceptions, like the myth that late-stage digital advertising lacks precision and requires sacrificing targeting accuracy.

A significant part of the discussion was around Facebook's ad restrictions, with DSPolitical advising campaigns to prepare well in advance and to diversify their ad spend to include other platforms such as Connected TV (CTV), which offers advantages like unskippable ads. The emphasis was strongly on using video content, given its proven impact on voter persuasion. By maximizing video formats, campaigns can reach audiences more persuasively and effectively amidst a crowded campaign market.

Finally, DSPolitical shared tactics for managing last-minute ad spends effectively. With strategic targeting tools, campaigns can ensure that their ads reach genuinely persuadable voters, rather than those who have already decided or voted. Utilizing programmatic advertising and CTV platforms means having access to up-to-date data, which boosts ad precision and cost efficiency. The ultimate goal discussed was maximizing voter turnout through refined digital strategies in the face of evolving campaign challenges.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter opens with a greeting and an indication of a brief wait to accommodate latecomers before starting the session.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Introduction of Speakers In this chapter, the speakers are introduced, and the session commences with a welcome message for attendees who are joining from the acoustic Coast.
• 03:30 - 06:00: Programmatic Advertising Overview The chapter titled 'Programmatic Advertising Overview' starts with a motivational note acknowledging the hard work people are putting in, especially as election day nears. Mary Ellen Velis, using she/her pronouns, introduces herself as a dedicated Texan aiming to turn Texas blue. She expresses the aim of the session: to impart tips and best practices for optimizing digital advertising in the crucial weeks leading up to the election. Mary Ellen is joined by her colleague, Sean, who will be introduced shortly.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Audience Optimization for Late Stage Campaigns Chapter Title: Audience Optimization for Late Stage Campaigns In this chapter, DS Political's team members share their experience and roles within the company, particularly focusing on Congressional campaigns and political operations in Central and South Texas. Sean Solis, the Client Services Manager, elaborates on the advancements and optimizations brought by DS Political since the 2020 election. The discussion emphasizes on the strategies and technologies involved in audience optimization for campaigns in their late stages, leveraging new tools and methodologies to enhance campaign effectiveness and reach.
• 09:00 - 13:00: Targeting Strategies and Data Utilization The chapter starts with a discussion on programmatic advertising, emphasizing its broad reach across the internet, often surpassing social media in volume. The concept may initially appear complex, but it essentially represents a significant portion of advertising seen on various platforms, including news sites and blogs.
• 13:00 - 18:00: Advertising Platforms and Strategies The chapter discusses the role of advertising technology in delivering ads online in real-time, emphasizing its importance in programmatic advertising. It highlights the strategy of finding and targeting users across various platforms, including mobile, desktop, and connected TV devices, especially during activities such as checking sports scores or using apps.
• 18:00 - 22:00: Facebook Ad Restrictions and Strategy This chapter discusses strategies and restrictions on Facebook ads, specifically focusing on optimizing audience targeting. It seems to transition from sports content, mentioning ESPN Plus and NBA score checking, to more general digital marketing strategies. Emphasis is placed on late-stage digital ad purchases and the importance of understanding audience optimization. It suggests that these strategies are part of a comprehensive approach to digital marketing in the lead-up to critical decision-making times like elections.
• 22:00 - 30:00: Creative and Ad Formats The chapter titled 'Creative and Ad Formats' emphasizes the importance of good data as the foundation of any effective digital campaign, a core principle at DS Political. The text acknowledges common misconceptions in digital campaigning, particularly around using digital lists and the balance between targeting and scale as election day approaches. The chapter aims to debunk these myths and offers insights into effectively managing these aspects, especially when dealing with late campaign funds.
• 30:00 - 37:00: Late Money Strategies The chapter titled 'Late Money Strategies' discusses the importance of effectively managing and applying any late arriving funds, especially in the context of programmatic advertising during an election cycle. The focus is on maintaining targeted advertising efforts, even as the election day nears, by utilizing tools such as list matches and custom audience targeting. The chapter emphasizes not sacrificing targeting precision despite the late stage of the election cycle.
• 37:00 - 57:00: Questions and Answers This chapter discusses the varying timelines and processes involved in customizing audience lists for online engagement. It emphasizes the importance of quickly addressing one-to-one audience needs, with the possibility of having a custom list ready to use within a day. DS Political's capability to target audiences with their always-on segments, which can be activated within a few hours, is also highlighted.
• 57:00 - 60:00: Closing Remarks and Resources In the final chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Resources,' the speaker discusses strategies for effective audience targeting in an election campaign. The focus is on using pre-existing, off-the-shelf audience segments that have been developed to target common voter groups effectively. These segments include audiences based on voter turnout density, vote choice scores, and new ideology and choice models, which are gaining importance in the current election cycle. The speaker emphasizes that utilizing these resources can help get campaigns off the ground and ensure they reach the right audiences efficiently.

Late Stage Digital Ad Strategy for Political Campaigns Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome everyone we're going to give everybody about one more minute to get here in the in honor of late stage digital well late late comers roll in and get started about uh at 02 after
• 00:30 - 01:00 already welcome folks thanks so much for joining us from acoustic Coast we have books here
• 01:00 - 01:30 um happy three weeks out from election day so many of you are hard at work to preserve our democracy and strengthen our democracy and so today we're going to just be here with a team of experts at DS political to share best practices and tips to optimize your digital advertising over the next few crucial weeks my name is Mary Ellen velis uh she her pronouns I am a Texan working very hard in Texas to turn it blue eventually I'm joined today by my colleague Sean will introduce him in a second business developer develop development director
• 01:30 - 02:00 here at DS political I've been with the team about a year having experience in Congressional campaigns and a political operative in Central and South Texas hi everyone I'm Sean Solis I'm the client services manager here at DS political uh here in DC originally from Southern California and I've been with cs vertical since the 2020 election uh helping get a lot of these uh new advancements that we have at the company to everyone uh or a lot of people on
• 02:00 - 02:30 this call so excited to get started here wonderful so let's just kick off why programmatic in the final weeks of the election first I kind of want to talk a little bit about what programmatic advertising is because sometimes it can seem like a daunting or complicated term but it actually just represents a much larger share of advertising than social media it encompasses almost the entire internet whether you're reading your favorite new site or scrolling through a cookie blog chances are you've caught a programmatic ad in between programmatic
• 02:30 - 03:00 advertising technology is what really allows us to deliver ads to users online anywhere in real time which is a crucial piece so programmatic advertising in the final weeks we want to find our voters and meet them online where they're serving whether it's on mobile on desktop or on the biggest screen in the house um those connected TV devices we want to catch them when they are checking out the postseason scores of the Major League Baseball we want to catch them when they're looking on a app in-app
• 03:00 - 03:30 experience for ESPN plus wanting to check the Spurs score from Texas over here if you're watching NBA kick off or as we're surfing the net and reading articles really getting into those final crunch times of who to vote for and why so just to kind of get started here uh we've broken this into a few sections to kind of make sure that we get our best practices for late stage digital buys the first one being to make sure that we optimize our audience as it says on your
• 03:30 - 04:00 screen the first part of any good digital campaign starts with good data that's something that we're really passionate about here at DS political but in order to kind of address these things especially for late money there are a lot of misconceptions going around so just kind of come right out front with it these misconceptions such as that there isn't time to onboard digital lists as we get close to election day or that you have to sacrifice targeting for scale as we get closer to election day these are some very common misconceptions that we can really start to address
• 04:00 - 04:30 um and it really comes down to making sure that uh any late money that you have coming in is appropriately applied to the correct channels and uh obviously here we have a lot to go on uh in terms of programmatic advertising so really just talking about some of those uh list matches to start with so list matching and using your custom audience just because it's towards the end of the election uh towards the end of the election cycle getting close to election day doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice that targeting you can still Target your one-to-one list onboarding
• 04:30 - 05:00 can you know vary in terms of matching your audience online the timeline for that can vary most of the time we can get your custom list uploaded and at least ready to use in some form within the next day so this is something that's really crucial to make sure that we can you can address your audience your one-to-one audience as quick as quickly as possible and put into use um at DS political we also have our always-on segments that we can uh Target uh very quickly some within two hours or
• 05:00 - 05:30 less using some of these pre-pushed uh segments that we have in place uh to Target very common audiences such as turnout uh audiences based on turnout density on vote Choice scores and even some of those uh newer ideology and uh Choice models which are becoming very important for this election cycle these are things that we can all use are pre-pushed off-the-shelf segments to make sure that we can get them uh get get get your campaign moving
• 05:30 - 06:00 um one other thing that we wanted to mention here on these one-to-one lists oops sorry about that uh one of the things that we want to mention here on these one-to-one lists is when you are uploading your custom audience to our platform we to make sure to check that augment your data button this is something that we've rolled out over the past year that really helps us make sure that our match rates are as high as possible uh what it will essentially do is take your custom list and once you augment my data button is checked it's going to go through and try to fill in any uh any outstanding data from the
• 06:00 - 06:30 voter file to make sure that there's a complete picture of a person that we're looking to Target online uh so you can get a time in that trade as possible with data being one of the pillars of DS political strategy we want to talk about how we can incorporate that in targeting who should I Target in the last three weeks before an election money folks find themselves asking that question and wondering you do I use a large serum of my money for a geographic uh or you know set of individuals or do I try to go in
• 06:30 - 07:00 for partisanship scores well one tip that we have here is folks with lower turnout scores tend to be a little bit more persuadable if you find yourself with extra budget consider expanding your minimum thresholds for voter turnout we found that folks with lower turnout scores also tend to be a little bit more persuadable so if you can have the ability to expand your audience add them add them back in now one of the cool things about DS political is there's so many flexible ways to part partnered with us we are here to democratize first-person data targeting so whether you are working with us in a
• 07:00 - 07:30 managed service capacity whether you're working with us on our self-serve platform deploy or whether you're on our Democratic ads.com platform which is built for our down ballot campaigns to have the same power that the top of the ticket is we're going to be there every step of the way helping you find a target audience using these pre-cut models that Sean has talked a little bit about we can identify folks based on their likelihood to turn out really focusing in our gotv persuasion universes we can also then focus on or geotv and then our second bucket is our
• 07:30 - 08:00 persuasion universes we can also play with using our models with the partisanship scores vote Choice index which I know our favorite of a lot of our folks here on this call all right one other thing we want to talk about here and making sure that we are optimizing our audience as as well as possible towards the end of uh the election time is making sure that you have good clean data um especially with late money it's making making sure that that uh
• 08:00 - 08:30 every dollar that you spend is as efficiently spent as possible so one thing that we're doing at dios political to make sure of that our data is as efficient as possible is that we are automatically excluding all of our already voted and early voted data as states begin to report that that data begins to appear in the voter file that's going to be automatically excluded from all of our audiences and all of our campaigns that we're running so you can know that your um that your late money dollars are going to people who are still persuadable are do still need to be turned out to vote essentially that it's
• 08:30 - 09:00 not being wasted on someone who's already mailed in or turned in their ballot to a Dropbox foreign s are running you know targeting with late money doesn't mean hyper Target nor should it usually but rather we're looking at the best intersection of reaching the right voters and scale to meet them and have the right investment in this race so let's talk about where they will see them first person targeted advertising of course is going to meet where that voter is online which is
• 09:00 - 09:30 different for every voter for their footprint across mobile desktop and TV now uh we'll talk a little bit about in a second about Facebook particularly Sean is our expert in creating some of these campaigns and kind of the do's and don'ts but really want to highlight that some of our placements are appearing across um you know on business eater slate especially in those local news sites that are going to be critical to your community into those normal elections yeah definitely um and as we start to
• 09:30 - 10:00 talk about where uh where you can place your ads online I think there is sort of the elephant in the room uh no pun intended battlemented people have been uh talking about especially this year um as in 2020 and that's the Facebook ad restriction period um so Facebook is an extremely important platform to be on um it is where a lot of online traffic um does go but we do always want to emphasize that uh Facebook is not the end-all be-all it's important to have a presence but placing all of your money on Facebook especially at such a late
• 10:00 - 10:30 stage in an election cycle maybe isn't the best idea and particularly is the ad restriction period comes into effect so as in 2020 um as I did in the 2020 election cycle this year starting on November 1st Facebook is going to restrict new political ads from being placed on its platform that include that is the meta platform including Facebook Instagram um and all of their other kind of uh platforms we're advertising can appear um what the ad restriction period is going to do is it's not going going to allow new political or social issue ads
• 10:30 - 11:00 to be placed during this time period they have stated that it will last from November 1st to November 8th but as in 2020 that can be movable Facebook does reserve the right to extend that period um without notice so this is something that when you're thinking about late money and where to put it Facebook can essentially change the platform and the rules regarding your platform without necessarily letting us know so especially as we look towards some relatively probable runoffs that are
• 11:00 - 11:30 probably going to start happening basically as soon as the election day is over there's no guarantee that Facebook is going to be a platform that we're going to be able to use for those uh runoff elections uh one other interesting thing to uh note and I think this has been going around online a little bit is this sort of pause and unpause method uh some people have been talking about in terms of a strategy of how to get around this adban uh essentially there was an article that someone wrote and coming out about uh setting your
• 11:30 - 12:00 creatives to go live pausing after they serve an impression and then unpausing the day before election day or something like that uh during the ad restriction period while this may or may not technically work we're not exactly sure how the platform's going to pan this out this year uh again with the policy changes there is always the chance that Facebook doesn't allow us to unpause Those ads in the middle of the Restriction period and then Those ads stay paused forever so it is best essentially to be on face if we're going to be on Facebook at this
• 12:00 - 12:30 late stage it's going to be best to make sure that we plan out in advance making sure that you have creative that can run the whole time to make sure you have some presence on the platform and uh always willing to try out different strategies but it's never a guarantee especially with Facebook I think as many of us know thanks so much Sean with three weeks left what kind of ads should I be running one of my favorite questions and the secret answer is video first of all
• 12:30 - 13:00 taking a step back from that answer um run with what you have you know we are three weeks out and so many folks really you know take a look and say I don't have this type of AD tactic I don't have this asset and really let it kind of become debilitating run with what you have run with what you know you've created such a great messaging over the course of this campaign that we want you to let us help place it but video is highly persuasive um another fun fact or secret of this of the trade here is that when we're creating a media plan for you we're
• 13:00 - 13:30 going to always be looking to Max up that video line before we're headed to anywhere else um if you need you know a 30 second video and only have two 15 seconds go ahead and Stitch them together for even some longer content foreign yeah definitely I think it's really important also when we're talking about late money to uh to speak very honestly about direct Buys so direct buys are great these are platforms that uh we can with some of our existing relationships
• 13:30 - 14:00 um like Hulu and peacock and Pandora Spotify or Pandora at least um some of these things that we can make sure um that with our relationships we can start some of these slides there it's important to be very upfront about uh the inventory and the scale on these platforms that as we get closer and closer to election day inventory becomes scarce and a lot of reservations uh we know that were made much earlier in the year for um for the election cycle at this time so in terms of direct buys we always
• 14:00 - 14:30 want to make sure that we're going to most efficiently use any kind of um any kind of late money that comes in and if a Direct Buy is something is a platform that you definitely want to be on um we're gonna we'll be happy to start that conversation and make sure that we can put the maximum amount of efficiency or use the maximum amount of efficiency towards targeting um on these platforms our programmatic platforms are always spun up a lot of our CTV inventory
• 14:30 - 15:00 especially uh does take some inventory from a lot of these Direct Buy platforms which is a great thing to be able to access that you're going to be able to access inventory across the Spectrum essentially speaking of CTV I heard you say it's Sean when is too late to start to see TV and should I even see me up there um the answer is it's never too late to be running CTV if you have a TV quality ad it is likely worth doing
• 15:00 - 15:30 um we even go so far to say with late money if it's coming in on day one cpv is a great place that you should go um other than a video pending your budget if you don't have time to really focus on frequency or hyper targeting and really determining an audience this will be a great shot for you to have uh put your message on the biggest screen in the household and with all things considered it will make the most impact with one impression headed right into those Final hours of election day
• 15:30 - 16:00 foreign touched on it before but obviously what you have um the the best creative is the creative that you have um this is obviously something that as we get down to the final Mark just maybe a place to talk a little bit about uh frequency and making sure that uh your voters are staying responsive to your ads um as we all know as it gets even closer
• 16:00 - 16:30 to election day the saturation of the media Market is extremely high and people are going to be inundated with political ads pretty much on every platform they see from morning to night so making sure that your content and the creative that you have is fresh and interesting um like Mary Ellen said making sure to kind of switch things up there's you know incredible things that green done with video editing nowadays um also something to highlight is that uh the first three to five seconds of a video ad especially are pretty crucial
• 16:30 - 17:00 when people take a look so really front loading your message to make sure that you have the biggest impact on whoever's seeing that dot ad um one of the things we also want to talk about especially as we as we get down to the uh the geotv timeline in an election cycle is social pressure um at Social pressure is a great way to um to really frame a message towards uh Geo TV in a lot of environments so I think the thing we always like to say is that who you vote for is private but whether or not you voted is definitely
• 17:00 - 17:30 public information um and this is something that we've explored is uh hugely important that if there if People's friends if people see that uh others that others in their Community are turning out to vote it's going to make them more interested and also want to turn out to vote section three are budget dump the smart way to spend it all and get the most bang for your buck the biggest question you might have there so what can I do with this exact
• 17:30 - 18:00 budget in a very small amount of time great question and while the answer is going to depend on a lot of different factors your audience size your the the length of time that we have between now and election day we are here to help you with our expert team of media planners to get that exact answer to your question here we're able to turn around media plans in about 24 hours or a less that can help calculate the exact number of Impressions that you would have and what you could see with that budget in a small amount of time what the number the frequency of ads that you can expect
• 18:00 - 18:30 between the different ad tactics of display video native CTV or social or if you're adding YouTube in there as well we use tools that really are going to optimize your spend deliver right on time and over deliver in fact we curated the best primarily non-skippable inventory as well with above average viewability rates so your voters are able to see um these ads at Great rates and have the highest persuasive impact they they can
• 18:30 - 19:00 all right so some uh some I think dues and maybe some do not uh following this but we have a couple of great tips on some of the things to do uh with your late money that's coming in so do spend more disk or more inventory um as we talked about when inventory becomes more scarce and we're getting down to those final days of the election cycle uh it's gonna are the uh the average bid price in in terms of a programmatic uh programmatic advertising is going to go up so think of it like an auction the
• 19:00 - 19:30 highest bid is going to win uh make sure to reach out to your media planner talk and to make sure that you can see if um if this is the right solution to make sure that you're really winning those bids and securing that more valuable inventory to get in front of those persuadable voters um in terms of higher cpms it's one of those things that winning uh 50 of your bids is better than losing 100 of them based on um you know budgets that you have available so another thing to do is that when we trust the data when it's time to open
• 19:30 - 20:00 the floodgates uh we often talk about this you know as it gets done as it gets down to it making sure that um that your ads and your messages are getting out there into your community into the geography that you're working in um but even though we can consider it opening the floodgates in a certain way there is a tactical way to do this one of the things that we do especially is to make sure that when we look to Target by geography we're making sure that we're focusing on the geographies where our target audience is most highly concentrated so even if we're going to
• 20:00 - 20:30 open up our strategy and just fully targeted geography we're doing that in a in an efficient way as well so uh this other do kind of goes back to something else we were talking about the have last minute creative swaps very you know varying your message changing things up and making sure that people are seeing a variety of even different styles of the ad it's really going to make sure that when people or they have the responsiveness when they see not the exact same amount every single time but maybe the same a message presented differently in a few different ways
• 20:30 - 21:00 and the last two that we have on here is just a reminder to make sure to Target voters until the last poll closes all across the country there's going to be rolling foreclosures on election days as the time zones change making sure that you are live until the polls close in the geography you're working it's going to make sure that you're going to get as many people as possible they're going to be people they're going to be people on you know taking the metro or something like that on to their polling place listening to the listening to the Pandora or
• 21:00 - 21:30 something as they're driving to their polling place then you may be able to get another voter that way and every single vote is going to count in this extremely close year now getting into the do not do not give in to the temptation to light your money on fire um while of course that would be fun you are certainly wasteful there um audience First Rule still applies know your audience build an audience using you know our tools or coming with
• 21:30 - 22:00 your own custom lists build a list and Hammer it home do not wildly expand the scope of your audience with no strategy um you think about it using filters whether it's boast Choi index um getting a little bit more of a propensity um looking into that geography and really um scaling or supplementing with Geo targeting those are going to be some of the first tips you'll want to do before you just expand with no strategy do not run untargeted geotv ads first
• 22:00 - 22:30 untargeted banner ads are probably worse than untargeted video ads but don't be the person that brings out someone in Geo TV that is not on our side of the aisle and finally do not treat all ad types the same as in terms of targeting goals um display video native CTV and many more all have different use cases and different impacts with our audiences it's not a one size fits-all but either a strategy that complements and supports and really helps curate the best
• 22:30 - 23:00 experience for those voters where they are to eventually head out to the polls to vote for your candidate or cause all right and I think we have some time for questions here as we go to the end of the uh the end of the slide deck here let's see what's going on see this here uh one question coming in in case of a runoff do we recommend
• 23:00 - 23:30 using programmatic channels absolutely and I think this goes back to something we were saying um back towards the uh the Facebook uh when we're talking about the Facebook ad restriction period um as in 2020 there's no there's not necessarily a guarantee that Facebook is going to lift that ad restriction right after election day they say they're going to do it now but as we saw before they can extend that and change it at any time um especially as a runoff becomes likely in particularly Georgia but also in some other places around the country
• 23:30 - 24:00 um making sure that we're on programmatic channels where we don't have those same types of restrictions is going to be extremely important um it's going to be a very crowded field I think for a runoff election especially in Georgia uh Mary Ellen I don't know if any other thoughts on that about how to how to best place those yeah um I actually I think this is going to Pivot us into another great question because we also want to make sure all of you know we work hard all the way up until election day and then the job is never done we're looking to the next
• 24:00 - 24:30 election runoffs all across um in in really keep competitive places and so uh we uh Sean we had a question come in that I think you can best answer here um we see early vote is automatically excluded do we have to reset our campaigns or as we're asking uh our uh our dedicated client services manager over here or as the campaigns are deployed or our audiences automatically updated so I don't have to worry yeah exactly so we're taking care of that on the back end um with these any audience uh you don't
• 24:30 - 25:00 need to update audiences based on um ballot returns or anything like that we're taking care of that so when you deploy an audience people who have already voted are automatically being suppressed from that audience when it goes live so no need to re-upload or reset anything on your end we also have a really great question here how quickly can I get ads up and running especially if I have last minute money to spend on day one well the answer to that is we are very fast super
• 25:00 - 25:30 fast Sean is super fast we are all here we are either campaign operatives or former you know formerly involved in campaigns and know the demands of the election cycle know the demands of a candidate um and so we're going to be able to get those ads up and running turning around media plans and one in less than four uh 24 hours but also you know some of the tools and the flexible ways to partner with us were built to help you do this on your own time to be able to get a campaign up and running on deploy without having to wait up for Sean or I to get up in the morning and have a cup
• 25:30 - 26:00 of coffee um so we are going to be very quick to get these up and running because no minute can be wasted to get every voter to the polls all right yes let's see it looks like we have another question here uh oops sorry I just lost it one second here uh we talked about securing inventory what's the best way to do that using deploy um so I guess this would mean in terms of making sure that uh you're getting the best of Impressions on deploy at
• 26:00 - 26:30 Maryland I don't know if there's anything giveaway to uh anything you want to say on that yeah so the great news is that um deploy was built on multiple um demand side platforms we have really tested our approach and tested our our mechanism here with multiple onboarders and more multiple demand side platforms we talk a lot about you know being a part of our deploy family ensures that we can give you and pass over to you our seats with these demand side platforms and the relationships that we have built
• 26:30 - 27:00 with suppliers to ensure that you have access to um the best inventory to the private Marketplace deals that we have secured to where that when you're creating and crafting your campaign you can bid on the highest um Quality inventory there is available on these sites thanks you'll have a lot of great questions coming in so we're working through them here let's see here
• 27:00 - 27:30 um all right what kind of data do I need to have on my custom list to get the best match rate um that's a great question uh and the simple answer is whatever you got um we're going to be able to as obviously with the more data that you have the better of match rate we're going to be able to get we see match rates uh go up exponentially when you include either a phone number or an email address for records preferably both but essentially the more data points that we have to match on the better chance that we're going to be able to be able to match that voter
• 27:30 - 28:00 online um this is also going back to the thing that we said before about the um this is also the thing that we said before about uh excuse me also the thing we said before about checking the augment my data but on uh when you're uploading your custom list it's going to make sure that any kind of gaps that are in your uh in your custom list are going to be filled using the voter file data that's true Sean we also have a question here on how
• 28:00 - 28:30 do you identify your likely voter segments that we have available yeah definitely so we have some uh great Partnerships particularly with Catalyst and PDI in California um to make sure that uh we can get the most robust uh models on what a likely voter is there um Catalyst has their own method for in uh in every state and the District of Columbia to determine what a likely voter is um it's based on a lot of different things that go into that in terms of uh history propensity all of that sort of
• 28:30 - 29:00 thing that comes out there so um that's going to be a great way uh for us to determine uh what a likely voter is uh if you also want to talk to your media planner you can make sure that we get specific data points on there if you want to make sure that people voted in specific elections in the past um you know making sure that they voted uh in every election in uh you know within a recent number of times these are all specifics that can be addressed with your media planner as well
• 29:00 - 29:30 we also have a question here what are the best platforms to place ads on um really great question I would say the best platform to place ads on is our own our own built DSP that we have we have come together to integrate the best in Tech and data uh it's the only platform that was built for Democrats by democrats for Progressive and Democratic causes and so um either allowing Sean and his team to place your ads for you or using one of
• 29:30 - 30:00 our self-serve deploy or democraticodds.com platform to get you that great inventory data and reach your audience where they are at yeah and I kind of want to highlight something you said earlier in Maryland too about uh CTV being the biggest screen in the house um that's really something to to take a look at when we're really trying to look at where are ads going to be the most effective you know people are constantly consuming a lot of the streaming content online and making sure that you're present on the biggest screen in the
• 30:00 - 30:30 house on the TV that people have in their living room um you know in their kitchen while they're they're uh you know making dinner or something like that something where it's going to be you know household or in the household the biggest screen that they have that's going to be a really effective way to make sure that the ad is being seen and heard because those ads are also not skippable yeah over 80 of Americans right now have a some kind of streaming device in their home um we're thinking those Smart TVs built-in Roku devices and so so much more uh we also have some eBooks on our
• 30:30 - 31:00 website at dsplitical.com uh connectedtv ebook one and two where you can learn more as well uh great I'm seeing a question here about programmatic audio is program is programmatic audio available on the deploy side just so what's a good rule of thumb press fitting budgets the programmatic audio uh so after time programmatic audio is um is a managed service um product that we're offering and it's going to be something that uh in
• 31:00 - 31:30 conversation with our team and the media planning team depending on where you're running the geography that's going to be super important to determine how much we're going to be able to do there it is built off of a you know it is a programmatic ad in the sense that we're going to find your voters what on whatever platform that they are streaming audio on and going to be able to programmatically serve ads that way so um that's going to be something that uh in conversation with the media planning team and taking in the specifics of each
• 31:30 - 32:00 race to be something we're going to be able to determine then let's see here we're looking at a couple more questions here for more information on programmatic audio feel free to reach out to us and the team we know folks have questions about the Publishers like Pandora I heart which manufacturers tune in and Sonos where do they appear and we're happy to talk a little bit more
• 32:00 - 32:30 yeah oh I'm seeing uh I'm seeing actually a really important question here do we only work for Democratic campaigns can we only target Democrats um so we do only at DS political we do exclusively work for Democratic and Progressive campaigns uh this is something that we're extremely aligned on with the values of our company uh you do not you uh we uh you can Target other than Democrats as well especially in certain districts it's going to be super important to uh talk to your independent to your no party preference voters um and in this specific case I'm seeing
• 32:30 - 33:00 later in this uh question about targeting Republican legislators um this is something that is that we are able to do you can anti-target as well um and so uh based on the uh based on the targeting capabilities that we have in the platform you can Target Republicans and their constituents as well lots of great folks doing some really fun tactics um social pressure really leaning into the values of this is not a red versus blue this is a value that we should all be supporting to reach those
• 33:00 - 33:30 Republican and independent voters I'm seeing another question on here uh are there changes in Creative between programmatic video and CTV so that's an interesting question so the the short answer is uh no you can use the same video that you're using on programmatic video on CTV as long as it meets the technical specifications um there's a couple of uh higher technical requirements in terms of like the resolution of bitrate and such those are available on the spec sheet both on deploy um and uh by your immediate your your
• 33:30 - 34:00 media planning team as well A good rule of something I always like to point out there for CTV that because most of the ads are or all of the ads essential actually on CTV are non-skippable there's really no uh there really is uh no harm in running a 30 second ad there um you know we see on programmatic videos sometimes 30 seconds is a long time for someone to watch a pre or mid-roll ad while they're reading an article on CTV the 30 second uh the 30 second ad is going to play the whole way through so it's a great way if you have a longer maybe TV ready message that is
• 34:00 - 34:30 going to be going out there that's a great way to make sure that that gets in play that seems like it's our last question unless you want to drop one in the uh chat feature right now while we are to closing up a little bit you know we wanted to thank you all for asking so many great questions we love advert ask answering them both of us are so passionate about programmatic advertising and supporting your campaigns um so unless you have another one feel
• 34:30 - 35:00 free to drop it now um we have so much more information to share with you sharing um at this stage is something that we really want to make sure that we are doing with our partners and with other folks in this space so that way on November 9th we all wake up knowing we did everything we can and hopefully we're celebrating some great wins across the country so if you want some more information first of all you can always reach out to our team I am happily and ready to talk with you further about your digital needs but also check out so
• 35:00 - 35:30 much more of our resources um if you go to dspolitical.com blog you will find a blog post that we have on how to prepare for Facebook's political ad PM you'll find ebooks where we talk more about programmatic audio where we talk more about CTV reaching the voters you need and not excluding the voters that you don't and and finally especially a digital ad checklist as you get ready and try to really prepare for the final three weeks
• 35:30 - 36:00 all right uh and thanks so much everyone for coming and attending um everyone will be receiving a recorded copy of this uh webinar so that they can reference it again and as always if you have any questions Mary Ellen I the entire team we're all here to help answer your questions and uh to do these last three weeks so let's go out there and win this thing