With Election Day right around the corner, campaigns are deciding where to put their remaining dollars and how to make every impression count. We asked five DSPolitical experts, who have years of campaign experience and understand the reality of finite budgets and tight deadlines, to share their best advice for the final stretch. Here’s what they told us.
Launch Fast
Time is the one thing no campaign can buy more of, so a slow launch is expensive. After years of managing campaigns in Texas, Andrew Dysert now helps campaigns build and launch their Deploy ad buys as our Senior Technical Accounts Manager.
What technical issues most often slow down a campaign launch, and how can teams avoid them?
Andrew: Two things slow down a launch more than anything else. The first is creative that isn’t in spec. File size, resolution, dimensions, and frame rate must all be right before an ad can run. If they aren’t, you’ll have to send it back to your designer while your launch date slips. Our new Creative Library in Deploy makes these types of errors easy to catch early: upload an ad, and you’ll see right away whether it’s ready to run. The second is your audience list. An incorrectly formatted or uploaded list can slow you down. Get those two things right, and the rest is plug-and-play. Deploy’s Media Planner can take you from a blank page to a solid plan in as little as ten minutes.
Spend Every Dollar Where It Counts
Once campaigns are live, the challenge becomes spending wisely as the calendar runs out. Dan Pino, a Director here at DSPolitical, has planned TV, radio, and digital ad buys for Democratic candidates and causes, including working as a Senior Media Planner for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign.
With early voting now underway, how should campaigns shift their spending from persuasion to turnout, and when?
Dan: Each campaign is different, and persuasion can happen right up until voters head to the polls. However, if a significant share of your electorate votes early or by mail, an early get-out-the-vote (GOTV) or ballot-chase program can increase overall turnout. When you partner with DSPolitical, you can easily target the exact voters you need to turn out and track down unreturned mail-in ballots. Our integration with Catalist updates automatically to remove people who have already returned their ballots, which takes the legwork out of constantly updating targeting lists.
Plan for Late-Arriving Resources
Late money shows up every October, and it does the most good for campaigns that are ready to put it to work. Deniece Joseph, a Client Services Manager, works directly with our clients and previously supported vote-by-mail operations at the Harris County Elections Division in Texas.
How can campaigns prepare for late-arriving money?
Deniece: Identify as early as possible where those funds should go and always have a plan for the best use of late money in a final push to sway the electorate. Don’t assume it won’t arrive, or that you won’t have any use for it because you’ve already done everything on your plan. Voters’ attention shifts constantly, so reinforcing your message in the final days and hours before people head to the polls helps it stick. With Deploy’s Media Planner, a new infusion of cash can quickly become a solid plan, and our Catalist integration keeps that added spend focused on voters who haven’t cast a ballot yet.
Watch the webinar: Waverly Loza, VP of Client Services, shares more actionable insights in Late Money in 20.
Know What’s Working and Adjust Quickly
Once the money is flowing, even the best plan needs a close eye. Raphael Gutierrez, a Programmatic Trading Associate, manages programmatic media buys for our clients and has been tracking campaign pacing and performance for years.
What signals tell you a campaign needs an adjustment mid-flight?
Raphael: Several campaigns DSPolitical runs start with a week-by-week flight plan, so we know where delivery and performance should be at every stage. Pacing is the first thing we watch, and Deploy’s optimizer does a lot of that work automatically. It evaluates pacing and delivery daily and adjusts bids, frequency, and inventory quality as needed, so campaigns stay on track. If a campaign is running ahead of plan, we adjust before it spends through inventory at a high cost per thousand impressions, and if it’s running behind, we act to make sure the full budget delivers. Our team watches performance metrics like video completion rate (VCR) and click-through rate (CTR) and addresses any drop right away. When real-time events occur, such as an opposition attack ad or budget changes, we respond in less than 24 hours. We work with the relevant teams to keep delivering for our clients through any shift in strategy, expected or not.
Meet Voters Where They Watch
With CTV ad spending this midterm cycle projected to outpace local cable by more than two to one, most campaigns know they need to be on CTV, but how voters stream matters just as much. Gwen Otwell, a Product Manager who works on Deploy and brings more than a decade of experience to the table, explains how to get it right.
How can campaigns optimize their use of CTV this late in the cycle to ensure they’re reaching voters where they consume streaming content?
Gwen: Don’t sleep on free ad-supported platforms! Effective programmatic political advertising is about finding voters where they are. Most voters watch a mix of free ad-supported content and subscription platforms, and nearly half say they stream more often than they watch cable or traditional TV. Your CTV strategy should reflect that mix. We built two models with Catalist to address that. Our FAST model scores voters from 1 to 100 on how likely they are to be heavy viewers of free ad-supported services like Tubi, Pluto TV, and the Roku Channel. The Paid Streamer model does the same for subscription platforms like Netflix and Hulu, flagging voters who may need a broader digital mix to reach since many prefer ad-free subscription tiers. When you use these models together and layer them with other DSPolitical audiences, you can build the right media mix for each voter group, with no additional data cost in Deploy.
The Bottom Line
The final weeks reward campaigns that move quickly and keep every dollar focused on the voters who matter most. DSPolitical’s team and tools are built to help you do both. If you’re ready to put your final-stretch plan to work, connect with our team below.