Media Intel Firm KPI Wants to Shed Light on the Digital Ad Wars

The political ad gap between the two parties isn’t just on TV anymore. It’s shifting to digital channels. And until now, nobody could actually see it happening.

Media intelligence firm Kinetiq Political Insights is launching a partnership with ad tech company VideoAmp that’s aimed at giving subscribers visibility into the digital side of political ad spending for the first time. 

That intel has existed on TV buys for decades. But with CTV and streaming eating up an increasing share of ad dollars, the new initiative aims to shed light on the digital side of the ad wars – something that National Media Insights Chief Strategy Officer Adam Wise called a “big hole in the industry.”

“Broadcast, cable, radio tracking has been a staple of politics for 30 years,” Wise said. “What has always been tricky is CTV. And as TV declines and cable dies a remarkably quick death, streaming is on the rise. It’s one in $4 spent in politics. And that one in 4 has been blind to people.”

“The question really has become: how do we track more about what others are doing? How do we understand what’s happening in the industry better?” he added.

There are real gaps between the two parties when it comes to digital spending, Wise said. Democratic advertisers have dropped about $187 million on Google this cycle, while Republicans have spent only about $142 million. On streaming, the spending is nearly even, according to KPI data tracked through Sept. 11. 

KPI said that its partnership with VideoAmp will effectively allow political advertisers to see spending on YouTube, premium streaming apps and CTV, as well as advertiser-level details and the digital creative itself. Subscribers will also get alerts when a new digital flight goes up, the company said.

According to Wise, that digital tracking ability matters more now than ever. Just four super PACs hold nearly half of all political ad reservations on TV for the fall. But what they’re doing on the digital side has largely been guesswork up to this point.

“We can start to see creatives in places we couldn’t see before. We can see spend in places we couldn’t see it before and we can see spend in detail that we couldn’t see before,” Wise said. “We’re able to start to understand where the gaps are and and what everything actually looks like.”