This week Campaigns & Elections magazine looks at how self-serve ad platforms like DemocraticAds.com are bringing sophisticated voter targeting to local and down ballot candidates. The piece notes:
Sophisticated poli-tech continues to creep into state and local campaigns. The latest example? Targeted Victory, CampaignGrid and DSPolitical launching “self-serve” platforms for voter-targeted online ad campaigns this cycle. These online portals let campaigns for state legislator, mayor or even city council buy digital ads designed to reach particular slices of their own electorates, relying on so-called cookies and other ad-targeting tech to hit the right people with the right messages.
With minimum ad buys in the hundreds rather than tens of thousands of dollars, these platforms are perfect for small campaigns determined to squeeze every voter contact out of their scarce resources. Judging from initial numbers from DSPolitical’s DemocraticAds.com system, the word is out. The total spent this year blew the company’s internal estimates out of the water, with 42 percent of the ads bought by state House campaigns and another 21 percent by candidates for state Senate.
With thousands of state legislators back on the ballot in 2016, self-serve online advertising should become a powerful tool for them to reach the voters they need to mobilize or persuade, particularly for those whose TV and radio options waste too many ad impressions outside district lines.