In 2020, one problem for political advertisers was a lack of OTT/CTV inventory and scale as the channel was hit with an influx of spending. That created a situation in some states with competitive Senate races where about 20 percent of people who saw the political ads soaked up 80 percent of the impressions served.
Too many ad dollars and not enough viewers is a problem now hitting linear TV, where the cord-cutting trend is colliding with marketers looking for reach.
From a report by analytics company Samba TV: “When considering that Q4 saw 97% of the quarter’s impressions served to only half of viewers, the stark over-saturation of a shrinking audience becomes even more clear. With more and more households cutting the cord, a linear-only strategy no longer has the capacity to reach all TV viewers or those who are increasingly shifting towards streaming platforms altogether.”
Adam Wise, a SVP at National Media Research, Planning & Placement, has been talking about political ad buying’s saturation problem for some time. He told C&E the Samba report was “spot on” and followed a similar one pushed out by Samsung’s Tom Fochetta recently.
“Our own study analyzing broadcast, cable & connected TV impressions in the Virginia gubernatorial election found the same thing. In the Washington, DC market, both candidates were virtually neck-in-neck reaching the same 48 percent of swing voters, with barely over half receiving any TV and digital ads,” said Wise.
One way to combat over saturation is with multi-layered media plans, which helps campaigns and groups defend against the limitations of each medium, according to Michele Certo of Sage Media Planning & Placement.
In the past, said Certo, that meant broadcast and cable television, radio, and perhaps print or outdoor advertising. But now, with more platforms and screens available than ever before, the media mix should broaden to include streaming TV, addressable cable and satellite, streaming audio, video, search, and social.
“Broadcast television’s waste problem is the flip side of many streaming platforms’ limited scale resulting in ridiculous frequency,” Certo said. “Building plans that rely on multiple mediums, in coordination with each other, provides the best opportunity to reach voters where they consume their information, and today, that’s everywhere.”
