How AI is enhancing political advertising
Mike Nellis is the founder and CEO of Democratic-focused fundraising and ad agency Authentic. In May, he also founded Quiller—an AI platform that helps Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations draft and deploy fundraising content—where he serves as executive chairman.
Nellis said he founded Quiller to accelerate the work of his team at Authentic with generative AI, which has helped deliver tasks such as coding fundraising emails and creating fundraising buttons. There is currently no tool for creating videos with AI.
“I spoke to a photographer last week who was telling me he was shooting a candidate on a green screen and then using AI to fill in the background,” Nellis said, citing an example. “So, instead of hiring background actors to sit at the kitchen table and pretend like they’re having a real conversation, I just use AI to do that with stock footage or the ability to generate that image.”
As of the time of this writing, Quiller was servicing 75 campaigns and organizations. Although there is no video tool to make deep fakes, Nellis said Quiller ensures no one is doing anything deceitful through the platform because “we have a closed beta, which means we're only letting people in after we vet them and that's on purpose,” he said.
Some believe deep fakes are a minor risk compared to the benefits AI will bring to political advertising, and the strategists who spoke with Ad Age all said they doubted any reputable campaign is out to use this technology for dirty tricks.
If any campaigns were to use AI for deceitful means, Clasen said she would imagine it would be political action committees (PACs). “They are more likely to be a little risky in terms of the messaging that they put out since it's not coming directly from the candidate,” she said.
“The dirty trick issue, while flashy, is overblown,” the digital strategist for the Republican presidential candidate said. “Right now anyone can send a piece of direct mail riddled with outright lies on it, and they could photoshop their opponent into a picture that made them look bad but wasn’t real, but it doesn’t really happen often. Will there be some bad actors? Sure. But there will be in every communication technology, new and old. I think the backlash from someone aggressively using AI to deceive voters in a high profile way would be so bad that it would make the operators as likely to avoid it as the groups themselves.”
This digital strategist said their firm uses AI to create more targeted digital ads. It also uses Open Interpreter, an open-source implementation of ChatGPT Code Interpreter, to do tasks such as writing scripts and scraping videos.
The person said these new AI tools have replaced the cost of “at least three” full-time employees.
At this point, the agencies are benefiting from these cost efficiencies, the digital strategist said.
“Typically the cost curve works by initially compensating agencies more, and then as agencies compete the commoditization pushes the value to the advertiser,” the person said. “I suspect the same thing will happen here, [it will] probably take a cycle or so to achieve.”
Whether cost-savings—if a campaign, let's say, does the creative in-house and then would reap the cost benefits directly—would allow for more media buys, the digital strategist said: “Eventually, probably, but the more likely scenario is they run more creative and do more testing and experimentation.”
AI will be really powerful in targeting swing voters this election cycle, Shepardson said.
“Getting to donors and optimizing how to extract money from people has gotten much more sophisticated,” Shepardson said. “There’s data that shows outcomes are enhanced with the enhanced ability to speak to [donors] about the issues they care most about, their fears and stuff.”
Swing states including Nevada, Georgia and Arizona, are always where the majority of political advertising is focused.
Los Angeles is also projected to be an epicenter of political advertising, per a recent report from Stagwell agency Assembly, which estimates political ad spend will reach $12 billion in the U.S. this election cycle. California has a rare Senate seat open with several hopefuls and “at least 10 U.S. House races in California that will be highly competitive in 2024, seven of which are Republican-held seats that Democrats see as viable pickup opportunities,” according to the report.
There may be more use of generative AI to create full ads within down-ballot races, where there is less money to spend.
“You could imagine a scenario where, you know, a state legislator had their creative generated by AI for budgetary reasons,” Clasen said. “You could see a world where races with lower budgets might try to use AI to communicate with voters. But it’s almost like, the more local your race is, it would, to me, be even more risky because there’s even more of a need to be talking to the community because it is so local.”
The digital strategist for the Republican campaign said he believes “AI is going to be ubiquitous enough” that it will be used at all levels this election cycle.
Candidates are going to have to reach voters across all digital platforms—from TikTok, to Reddit, to Instagram, to YouTube, to CTV platforms—and AI is going to be critical in doing that, especially at a local level, said Tal Jacobson, CEO at Perion, a global ad tech company that is working with some U.S. political ad agencies.
“The only way to really deal with all those channels and all those audiences, with all those messages locally, is through AI,” Jacobson said. “You can't generate so much content and so many creative permutations without AI. Even CTVs now can be targeted locally. If you know that in a specific city, not just a state, you're very weak at the polls, you can target them [with] digital out-of-home. The fact that you can strengthen in specific locations, as opposed to nationwide; that’s a lot more powerful."