This year the company did even more political business, despite
just a handful of gubernatorial, mayoral and down-ballot races in
play, according to David Algranati, Rentrak's senior VP-TV product
innovation. He said revenue from political clients has grown two to
three times since last year, and considering that 2012 marked a
nationwide effort for Obama's presidential run, the increase is
significant.
The company uses an outside firm -- in 2013 it was Experian -- to match its TV-subscriber data
to voter-file data from the campaigns and their parties. The end
results are anonymized audience segments categorizing voters
according to interests, likelihood to vote and political
leanings.
The old model is "'What kind of viewers do these programs
deliver?' and our approach is to turn that on its head and say,
'Who are the people we want to hit?'" said Larry Grisolano, partner
with Democratic TV-buying firm AKPD Message and Media. "There's no
doubt we were able to find programming that is richer in our
targets than if we were just doing the typical buy without the
benefit of this research," said Mr. Grisolano, whose firm partners
with online-ad firm Bully Pulpit Interactive and TV-targeting
platform Anayltics Media Group.
Traditionally a campaign would buy TV based on ratings showing,
for instance, that adults 35 and over in a particular market are
core viewers of a show. Today, by combining voter data with set-top
box data, campaigns might learn that a segment of voters they hope
to influence has a 3 rating with Comedy Central's "Colbert Report,"
suggested Mr. Algranati.
The concept is still quite new and certainly not prevalent among
all campaigns, but insiders believe it's the wave of the future for
TV targeting.
Firms sprout up
Firms are sprouting up to serve the fledgling market for
voter-data-fueled TV targeting. Along with Analytics Media Group, Bluelabs serves
the left and Deep Root Analytics serves the right. "The fact that
you had both of the 2013 Republican gubernatorial campaigns using
advanced TV targeting speaks to how likely you'll be to see this in
broad use in 2014 and beyond," said Alex Lundry, co-founder of Deep
Roots Analytics, which does voter-file-enhanced TV-ad targeting for
GOP campaigns. "There's no doubt the data is in the middle of TV
buying in a way it's never been before," said Michael Beach,
co-founder of GOP digital-ad firm Targeted Victory.
For Democrat Terry McAuliffe's winning Virginia gubernatorial
effort, which worked with Rentrak, more refined voter segments
offered the opportunity to deliver thousands of nuanced messages to
voters, mainly online. "We had more creatives per voter in Virginia
than I think we did on OFA nationally," said Mark Skidmore, partner
and chief strategist at Bully Pulpit Interactive, which handled
digital advertising for the campaign. The campaign developed around
3,500 different ad versions, he said.
The McAuliffe campaign spent around 25% of its persuasion-ad
budgets (meaning on ads intended to sway voters rather than to
generate fundraising dollars) on ads that targeted based on
voter-file matching, and were purchased through exchanges and
automated TV-buying platforms rather than ads targeted behaviorally
or demographically.
Still need frequency
"Campaign strategists are crunching the numbers and seeing
the lift they can get by making their TV ads more efficient and
more effective and realizing that this is well worth the cost,"
said Mr. Lundry. "We are seeing costs savings between 10% and 20%
compared to traditional TV buys, not to mention the fact that
you're now more likely to get the ad in front of those voters that
matter most."
While data-centric ad buying may reduce some waste and create
some efficiencies, overall campaign costs aren't necessarily going
down, said Mr. Skidmore. In addition to ensuring enough resources
to produce creative variations, campaigns need to make sure their
ads are seen multiple times whether online or in TV. "You're still
going to have to spend on the frequency part," he said.
However, while digital data is changing TV targeting, the
promise of cross-platform digital and TV-campaign planning and
buying remains somewhat elusive. Although some parts of the process
are automated, said Mr. Beach, the actual TV-buying transaction
"still requires a personal touch."
