How CTV Can Affect Your Political Campaign

Advertisements on CTV are becoming a major player in political campaigns. Learn what CTV is in politics and how you can leverage it as part of your next campaign. 

WHAT IS CTV? 

Connected TV (CTV), also known as a smart TV, looks and functions like a regular TV, but is also integrated with the internet. This makes it possible for users to browse the internet and stream content.

DO I HAVE A CTV? 

If your TV requires an internet connection, you most likely have a CTV. If your TV connects directly to applications like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video, you have a CTV. 

HOW CAN CTV HELP YOUR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN? 

As part of the many entertainment services available on CTV, there are also opportunities for digital ads and programmatic advertising. Digital political ads are powerful because you can leverage big data to reach your target audience better. This helps you place your ad to the right audience at the right time and on the right device.

Programmatic advertising is an algorithm that matches your ad with the correct target audience by using multiple forms of segmentation. Using segmentation for advertising, you can divide the wide market into smaller groups to help your ad find the right person at the right time. The four forms of segmentation are:

1. Demographic

2. Behavioral

3. Geographic

4. Psychographic 

DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

Demographics are broad categories of a population, and understanding them can help you place your ad with the right audience. Programmatic advertising uses demographic segmentation to create hyper-focused groups that your campaign can target. Some of the demographics used in programmatic advertising include: 

• Age

• Income level

• Education level

• Gender

You don’t have to stick to just one demographic section when creating your ad campaign. It’s possible to run a campaign targeting upper-middle-class college-educated women in their 60s. This can seem exactly the opposite of other campaign advertisements where you’re just trying to get the word out to as many people as possible. By using hyper-specific demographic segmentation, you can create customized ads that better speak to the individual needs of that audience. It’s the modern difference between setting up a billboard for your campaign for a broad public appeal or going door-to-door and speaking to each person individually. 

BEHAVIORAL SEGMENTATION

Behavioral segmentation focuses on consumers’ actions and targets segments based on their likes, dislikes, and interests that they establish through their online shopping and searching habits. This is beneficial for political CTV campaigns because it identifies and targets viewers who align with a political ideology or major cause and allows the campaign to speak directly to those opinions and their unique pain points. 

As part of behavioral segmentation, you can target voters who are searching for your candidate or key topics that your candidate supports. This type of segmentation can be used as part of a political campaign when focusing on campaign-based keywords. It’s even possible to use behavioral segmentation to place negative ads for people who demonstrate that they’re on the fence or support your opposition. 

GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

City-wide or statewide advertisements are a waste of money if your campaign is only for a small district. Programmatic advertising on CTVs uses geographic segmentation to give you the power to create your own markets based on location. 

By restricting your ad by location, you make sure that your campaign’s ads are seen only by people who have a vote that matters in your campaign. If you’re running a larger campaign, geographic segmentation also helps you save money by only targeting specific districts. Rather than wasting your advertising money in a district that traditionally votes 90% in favor of your opponent, you can spend your budget in areas that are a much closer race. 

PSYCHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

This type of segmentation breaks people into groups depending on how they think. Rather than focusing on people’s actions, psychographic segmentation focuses on the motivation behind the actions. This includes things like:

• Values

• Behavior

• Interests

• Attitudes

• Opinions 

• Personality

• Lifestyle

• Social Status

By using data like activities, interests, and opinions, your campaign can reach out to people based on core beliefs. This can be used to help you strengthen your footing in your political party and with core supporters, but it can also be used to help you find more centralist supporters or even people on the other side of the political spectrum with whom you share a common ground. 

AGILITY CAN HELP

Agility lets you tap into programmatic advertising, allowing you to run ads on CTV for your political campaign. 

Contact us today and learn more about how we can help.