How Will the Election Impact Paid Media Campaigns?

November 3rd is under a month away, and with the meteoric rise of digital usage since 2016, more than ever, politicians and political groups are turning to digital ads to reach their target audience. Even anecdotally, users in the United States have experienced a recent glut of political ads across their online experiences. As the general, state, and local elections approach, political ad spend has risen and will only continue to crest. How will the entire paid media landscape will become affected? For all brands, political spending will cause an increase in competition, driving costs up, and making competition for eyes and device real estate more intensive, an important reality to be aware of as politics take center stage.

As political spending creates a new balance of cost and clicks, brands can see the impact across both national and local campaigns. The ability to take a closer look at the state a campaign or political organization is targeting makes this even clearer. In August, Facebook launched a new tool, an election spend ad library, that can be used to track campaigns “about social issues, elections, or politics” and provides transparency into how campaigns use the platform’s advertising options. It has the option to see which states have been the most affected by spending over different periods of time; for instance, presently, markets in California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania have been the most heavily impacted. This information could be crucial for any businesses running local campaigns in these areas or others, and brands would do well to keep an eye on their CPMs/CPCs as Election Day approaches.

For any brands planning to comment on the election in their ad campaigns, it is also important to be aware that Facebook and Google will be blocking election ads, or any ads relating to discussion of “candidates, the election, or its outcome” after Election Day. Facebook also plans to stop accepting new political ads in the week before election, while Google will ban ads targeting election-related search queries. It is not yet clear how long these measures will last, but is a precaution tech companies are taking given the expectation of delayed election results. If you are amplifying non-election related content, you should still be prepared for delays to their respective campaign approval processes and the need to submit manual reviews for falsely rejected ads due to this increased scrutiny.

Here’s our roundup on how the election impacts various paid media channels and tactics:

Programmatic

• When it comes to programmatic campaigns, there could be overlap in audiences targeted by campaigns and by brands – just as there is on any given brand or vertical due to the nature of the audience-buying model.
• With many placements usually available per page, there are multiple opportunities to still reach the user, even though other ads may also be placed on the site. It might be harder to win bids on news sites, so brands looking to target there may wish to blacklist or consider alternative options.
• With the CPM buying model, there isn’t an increase in CPCs. Overall, we’ve observed a slight increase in CPM from March to date, likely a result of not only increased inventory, but also increased competition and budgets shifting from traditional/OOH to in-home CTV/OTT, banners, and rich media.

Connected TV

• Overall, budgets have shifted from OOH to Connected TV. CTV will see a rise in money going into its ecosystem, because it is felt to be a very persuasive medium, combining the power of programmatic with the more traditional feeling of TV. Thus, increasing costs competition may be on the horizon.

• Adweek spoke to marketers who specialize in politics, and 63% of them said agreed CTV was one of the major developments in political advertising that would yield favorable results.
• Video overall, through the platforms of CTV, OTT, other programmatic spaces, including Facebook, YouTube, etc. will likely be one of the most impacted areas this election cycle.

Paid social

• We anticipate increased cost per session, CPM, and other cost-related metrics due to increased competition between August and October when it comes to paid social, but this is unlikely to reach the level of typical November/December holiday competition.
• As we have discussed with our Facebook representatives, “Because of the dynamic nature of the auction and advertiser activity, it is very difficult to pinpoint a specific reason (including Election year spend) as the cause for a change in rates. An advertiser can see rates increase or decrease by changing one of their campaign strategy levers; for example, an advertiser that is opted into one placement may see performance and efficiency improve by altering their strategy opting into Automatic Placements. Regardless of Election year campaign activity, advertisers should adhere to Facebook’s best practices (including Broad Audiences for lower-funnel optimizations and geo-targeting) where possible to maximize performance and efficiency.”

• In 2018, Pinterest banned political ads, and last month, it also stopped showing ads to users searching common election-related terms, such as candidate names, “polling place,” and “vote.” It also redirects queries like “vote by mail” and “voting 2020” to the non-partisan resource vote.org to find more information on the election, register to vote, and more.
• Additionally, Pinterest plans to “limit recommendations about election-related content (like election memes or slogans) in places like the home feed and notifications. [They’ll] also turn off search autocomplete and search guides for specific election-related terms. 
• As of November 2019, Twitter globally prohibits the promotion of political content.

Google Ads

• For search and Shopping campaigns, we expect costs to stay relatively unaffected by political campaigns. Search campaigns that are focused on keyword-specific search queries will remain largely separate in most cases, because it is unlikely that political campaigns will be bidding on brand specific sets of keywords, preventing an increase in cost per click.

• For display and video, we do expect an increase in CPC due to political campaigns targeting users that may overlap with brand audiences. Companies can expect ~5-30% increase in CPC between August and October, but this will vary per state, with swing states having a much higher increase. Similar to paid social, these increases are likely to be smaller in comparison to November/December shopping season for many brands.
• Because Discovery campaigns are new, there is no historical data to show if political campaigns will invest in this channel. We can reasonably assume there will be a slight increase, similar to display and video, but may not have as far-reaching as an effect, as companies are still working to understand its place in their ad budgets.

Overall, programmatic, paid search, and Shopping campaigns will not see much of an effect as a result of election ad spend, while paid social, Connected TV, and YouTube will experience cost increases, but not on the level of holiday competition driving up costs. Effects on Google Discovery are unknown as it’s a new product.

Investis Digital’s team of performance marketing experts are continuing to monitor the impact political spending has our clients’ paid media channels. We are proactively tracking the changes in our campaigns and working to make the most of ad dollars while keeping paid media effective, and to offer the best possible solutions as the landscape shifts. To discuss election ad impact on your campaigns, or anything else in the paid media sphere, please get in touch today.