Mike Adam, the former deputy chief data officer at the RNC, has joined National Media Research, Planning & Placement with a simple goal: help campaigns and groups reach voters being missed in the barrage of ad spending next year.
“There’s a huge swath of voters out there who are not being reached by campaigns — whether that’s through onboarding, or because of their different media consumption habits — and unfortunately, I think, not all these campaigns know the questions to ask and the tools that are available to them,” said Adam, now a VP.
Some of the questions clients should ask their media buyers: how are they measuring reach, how are they measuring audience size and how are they measuring the effectiveness of the creative?
“We know more today about voters than we ever have,” Adam said. “So one of our goals is that we have to be smarter about how we’re targeting, we have to be creative with how we’re targeting so that we can find new people and expand our reach and ultimately expand our effectiveness.
“It’s easy to just look at the campaign-level metrics and not realize that within this 10X frequency, or whatever it is, some voters are seeing this [ad] zero times, some voters are seeing it hundreds of times,” he said. “We’re really trying to hone in on the people that are seeing it zero times. If you’re missing 5, 10, 20 percent of your audience, that could be the difference maker in a campaign.”
One edge Adam brings to the position is the fact that he’s been part of the data teams on several high-profile campaigns, including: Charlie Baker’s first gubernatorial run in Massachusetts in 2014, Scott Walker’s presidential in the 2016 cycle and later Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey’s reelect that same year. It was an informative experience that he encourages other young practitioners to replicate.
“I’ve always been a proponent of encouraging folks to go out into the field, work on a campaign, work at a state party, get some sort of on-the-ground experience,” he said. “When you join a firm or work for a party committee, you can speak from experience.”
