Creative Insights: Adapting to the Targeting Landscape for 2022

Joe Corbe of 1631 Digital spoke to C&E about planning online ad campaigns in an uncertain digital environment.

Just how reliable will Facebook and Google be for political campaigns in 2022? Nowhere near enough to be overly reliant on those platforms to accomplish your ad goals in the midterm year, digital strategists warn. 

“Google and Facebook are incredible channels to deliver messaging to, but they’re not the only channels to deliver messaging to,” 1631 Digital’s Joe Corbe said in a recent interview with C&E. “There’s a ton of programmatic options out there. There’s a ton of first party information that you can target with.” 

According to a recent Bloomberg report, Facebook’s parent company Meta is looking at whether the political ad ban that came very late in the ’20 cycle had unintended consequences for political advertisers and what it would mean if the platform instituted a similar ban ahead of the midterm election. 

The key for political advertisers, said Corbe, is being nimble so strategy can adapt when needed: “It’s just trying to see what cards you have and then play them as best you can.” 

When it comes to smaller campaigns that may not have the budget to go long and broad with their digital advertising, Corbe said it’s about making use of the data that is available and finding the inventory you need outside of the walled gardens.  

“On the lower level, the access to data is better now than it was last election cycle,” he said. “We were running campaigns, on a monthly basis, between three and ten thousand dollars, just for perspective. And they were still getting a lot of those [more sophisticated] tactics. For that price point, you can still logistically get a very dialed in, data driven strategy. So I think the timing now for smaller campaigns is better than ever.”