Political Advertising & Marketing During an Election Year - Webcast

Comcast Spotlight Take Five

We hope you had a chance to attend our Take Five for Your Future webcast, What Every Political Marketer Should Know During an Election Year, which took place on March 22. If you didn't, you can view the complete webcast now.

A panel of experts shared research on how viewers consume news and how marketers can engage the public, reach specific voting blocks and spend their campaign dollars more efficiently.

Dan Sinagoga, Vice President, Political Sales at Comcast Spotlight, kicked off the discussion by explaining how the increase in demand for advertising inventory, particularly in September and October as the November elections near, will impact advertisers. This may lead to shift from positions on cable interconnects (a group of cable systems that collectively reach all cable homes within a market) to individual systems to ease the demand. Because Comcast Spotlight offers zone coverage, which allows targeting by zip code, or neighborhood, marketers can reach specific voter demographics (and for local races, reach only those voters who will vote in that race. Sinagoga said that for the 2010 elections, 70% of cable commercials were targeted by zones.

Next up was Katie Handel, Vice President at The Tarrance Group, who shared the results of a bi-partisan research study conducted by The Tarrance Group in partnership with Lake Research Partners. The study of registered voters in California showed that 62% spend their time predominantly watching cable vs. local broadcasting, and 35% watch news most often. However, 47% hadn’t watched a news program within the previous 48 hours, which means there are many other opportunities to target voters through other programming and networks. More detailed results of the study are available by downloading the slides or by viewing the webcast.

Kyle Osterhout, Partner at Media Strategies & Research, shared some overall media trends and said that political marketers should take advantage of the micro-targeting capabilities now offered along with like Adtag and Adcopy. Adtag gives advertisers the opportunity to use custom five- second tags at the end of their commercial for a different specific location.Adcopy allows two different commercials to different audiences within the same market (for example, airing a message about one topic in a given area, and a different topic in another area). Both of these are advertising solutions are ideal for political advertising, where it’s all about the localized message. Kyle also noted that reaching viewers on multiple screens—on TV and online—is increasingly important for political marketers. This point is underscored by a Nielsen IAG study that found message recall increased by a remarkable 53% when online video advertising is used in conjunction with on-air advertising.

To download the slides from this or other educational videos and webcasts, please visit: http://www.comcastspotlight.com/takefive