In an election year marked by a big jump in streaming, political candidates might be among the advertisers looking to spend money on connected TV.
A new survey by Magnite--the ad platform formed by the recent merger of Rubicon Project and Telaria--found that 40% of persuadable voters have not been persuaded to subscribe to cable or satellite TV.
Magnite, in a study entitled “The Power of CTV: Reaching Persuadable Voters in 2020” defines persuadable voters as the 30% of eligible voters who call themselves independent or undecided.
The survey also found that 70% of persuadable voters have an ad-supported streaming service, including 81% of Hispanic and Latino voters.
“Four years ago, political advertisers were not thinking about CTV as a big opportunity but that is a stark contrast to this election cycle where 40% of persuadable voters can’t be found through cable and satellite services,” said Dan Fairclough, senior director of Political Demand Sales at Magnite. “Candidates are honing in on specific types of voters, the ones who are hard-to-reach, undecided and young, particularly in swing and flip states. CTV provides that level of targeting within premium brand-safe content not found on social media and with the agility that traditional TV buying lacks.”
The study found heightened interest in this year’s election, with 88% of those surveyed saying they plan to vote and 73% saying they’ll pay more attention to political ads in this election compared to the last one.
The findings showed that 75% of those surveyed prefer political ads that have video and 70% reported taking an average of two actions, such as conducting more research on a candidate and visiting a candidate’s website, after seeing a digital video political ad.
Political ads on social media were described as untrustworthy and deceitful by 72% of respondents.
“As more video content is consumed online, it becomes critical to reach voters with quality inventory when they are receptive,” said Sean Senters, director at Targeted Victory, a digital agency that started out doing political campaign and now also works for brands. “The uptick in cord-cutters and a pandemic-induced stay at home lifestyle has made CTV a powerful tool for advertisers to have a TV-like experience with digital tracking and metrics. With more than two months to go until Election Day, we are already seeing CTV scale at levels we did not believe we would reach in 2020.”
“Given how complex the issues are this campaign season, we’ve already seen CTV provide us with both the audience reach and longer form creative canvas needed to most effectively communicate candidate platforms and messages at scale,” added Brian Stoller, CMO at Mobiquity Technologies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated cord-cutting while more people turn to free ad-supported CTV for news and entertainment. In the study 76% of cord cutters said they were streaming more ad AVOD content now than before the virus descended on the country.
“CTV presents an effective, responsible and transparent opportunity to engage with voters,” said Adam Lowy, head of North American demand sales and strategy at Magnite. “With CTV, political buyers can eliminate wasted impressions and are no longer bound to DMAs, which sometimes cover two, or even three states. We’ve helped political advertisers layer in additional criteria to help their buys go further, with higher match rates and high viewability.”
