2020 showed us the raw power of political CTV advertising and as we sit here now staring down the road at 2022, the $8BN question is - did everyone notice?
With plans being put into place as we speak, the growth in spending commitments for political CTV ad campaigns is already beginning to show. But more importantly (and excitingly) than this, the strategies that are being deployed by some of the candidates and political agencies we are talking to are unbelievably progressive.
In some respects it's as if digital political advertisers haven't just woken up to CTV in this era of declining linear viewership, but they've managed to leapfrog years of education in CTV advertising and go straight to the finishing line.
However, not all political CTV advertisers are there yet, and it's for them that this 'political CTV advertising 101' has been written. To many of the people who have been slow to join the revolution, the prevailing signals we get from the people we're talking to about the 2022 midterms send a clear message - 'TV works, CTV is either an unknown or it's too complicated to think about'.
While at Origin our job is to provide political CTV advertisers with industry beating Native CTV political advertising solutions that make their campaigns more effective, it is not our only job. We are also thought leaders, who with years of proven success with more 'mainstream' CTV advertisers behind us also make political CTV advertising simple.
As such, here is a simple list of reasons for everyone out there who is exploring political CTV advertising as an option, but have yet to commit too deeply:
Household Reach
According to Statista, over 82% of American households have at least one internet connected TV device. On top of this, in 2021 over 49% of Americans were using CTV as their method of consuming content.
Accuracy
The continued investment being made into how CTV advertisers (including political CTV advertisers) can pick 'n choose the households and demographics they are reaching is significant.
With data platforms such as LiveRamp enabling marketers to combine both 1st and 3rd party data into their political CTV strategies, they can target households in almost every way imaginable and more importantly than that - every way they have yet to imagine.
Attention
According to a 2019 Annual Internet Trends report, almost 90% of living room content consumption happens by people who also have a cell phone in their hand. This present both a challenge as well as an opportunity.
The opportunity - as you will later on in this article, the very fact that a viewer has a phone in their hand means they are in a prime state for 'activation' by a political CTV ad (more on this to come).
The challenge - Ongoing studies by partners of ours such as TVision Insights has proven that we live an age where a viewer's attention is the rarest commodity there is. When an ad break starts, they turn to these devices, making it unlikely that someone is even watching your ad. This is why we created the first ever Native CTV solution specifically built for Political CTV advertising.
Learn more about Instant Native CTV Political advertising here.
Efficiency
When one couples the fact above with Native CTV solutions such as ours which have been proven to create up to a 90% increase in the attention a viewer is paying to the screen when an ad starts, the need to over saturate a household in order to get your message across becomes moot.
If you then layer on top of this an effective frequency capping strategy, the result is that for every dollar you are no longer wasting on a household that has already seen and remembered your ad, you can spread that political CTV investment further.
Agility
The need for political CTV advertising to send more than one message and to be able to alter or update its message in real-time eclipses the needs of other more mainstream CTV advertisers. With the dynamic, data-fed capabilities that companies like ours have built into their creative technology solutions, political advertisers can quite literally change their message with the weather.
Furthermore, political CTV advertisers who are looking to activate viewers from their sofa have had a world of opportunity open up to them thanks to QR codes. To learn more about how to use QR codes correctly in your political CTV campaign, click here.
Audience Insights
While there are indeed options out there for political CTV advertisers to survey the households they reach on traditional linear TV, the options are severely limited when compared to solutions such as LoopMe and Lucid. Not only do these solutions allow you to get more granular with who you are targeting, but the responses you get can actually be used in virtually real-time to make creative/copy edits to your message.
Measurement and Metrics
Last but not least, Connected TV advertising is about more than completion rates, the cost per viewable complete and even, dare I say it, viewability. It is about creating and measuring the impact an ad has on the crucial objectives that any political CTV advertiser wants - awareness, consideration, intent, preference...and of course, outcomes.
In conclusion
There are of course numerous other reasons why political CTV advertising has its advantages over traditional TV, but we hope this gives you a taste as to what's in store.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about CTV or how political CTV advertisers are working with Origin to elevate the impact of their investments, reach out and we will be here - solutions@originmedia.tv
ABOUT ORIGIN
Origin is a pioneering creative technology company whose first to market Native CTV ad solutions are reshaping the way brands engage and activate consumers on the largest screen in the home.
Fusing dynamic content animation with proprietary ad serving technology, Origin's proprietary Native CTV ad formats elevate attention, recall, consideration and outcomes for brands who want to amplify their voice on Connected TV.
Origin was founded by media veterans Fred Godfrey and Stephen Strong whose careers have been shaped by their relentless commitment to enraging the status quo. Learn more at www.originmedia.tv.