Next door neighbors may not see the same ads!

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Political TV ads are beginning to choose their viewers
It's the next step in campaign targeting based on masses of data about consumers and voters.
By Martha T. Moore, February 9, 2014

This fall voters in Arkansas will undoubtedly be inundated with political ads thanks to a key Senate race and an open governor's seat. But they may also find that when they see a political ad on TV, their next-door neighbor doesn't.

That's because almost half the homes in Arkansas subscribe to satellite TV rather than cable — and satellite TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network are now pitching political advertisers on ads that air only in households that match the campaign's target voters.

Call it direct mail for TV: First used by the Obama campaign in 2012, these "addressable" ads allow campaigns to target a list of voters and match them with Dish and DirecTV's 20 million subscribers. A third-party data-matching service is used so that satellite subscribers' identities are protected. Once the households are selected, the satellite provider sends the TV ads to the home's digital video recorder, and the ad airs as part of whatever programming the customer chooses.

"I see this as being the new big thing in 2014,'' says Drew Brighton, CEO of TargetSmart, a Democratic firm which creates voter databases and is involved in addressable ads. "In past cycles it was the digital stuff with the cookies. Now we're not just figuring out which doors to knock on, we can figure out which households to send an ad to.''

Addressable ads offer a more sophisticated level of targeting than buying ads on particular TV shows based on the demographics of the audience. And they fit in with political strategists' newfound love of big data in the wake of the Obama campaign's successful use of statistical modeling of potential voters and targeting of messages.

As a result, consultants say addressable ads on satellite TV are likely to turn up in key statewide races this year, including in Arkansas, where Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor is facing a tough reelection fight and the governor's seat is open. More than 40% of homes in the two biggest TV markets in Arkansas have satellite TV.

Ditto Michigan, where almost a third of homes use Dish or DirecTV, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is up for re-election, and there is an open Senate seat.

"We're excited about it — it's a new arrow in the quiver.'' says GOP media strategist Will Feltus of National Media. Research shows that people in households with satellite TV are no more likely to vote than people who have cable, Feltus says — but they do tend to be slightly more Republican.

Media consultants say the addressable ads are likely to be expensive — satellite providers don't have to offer candidates their lowest rates, as broadcast networks are required to do — and potentially scarce, since satellite providers sell only two minutes of ads in every hour of programming. (The rest is sold through the program channels themselves.) Some big cities like Philadelphia, Boston and New York have low numbers of satellite TV viewers.

Voters increasingly choose sides early in a race, says GOP media consultant Brad Todd, leaving campaigns scrambling to target the dwindling undecideds. "The ability to hone in on those undecided voters and overdeliver the message that is critical to them will be vital.''

In last year's race for governor of Virginia, political action committee NextGen Climate Action ran ads on Dish Network aimed at voters who cared about environmental issues but tended not to vote in off-year elections. But it also ran a second group of ads, opposing Republican Ken Cuccinelli, in three predominantly Republican counties in western Virginia where a Cuccinelli aide was embroiled in a controversy over energy royalties that had been withheld from landowners. NextGen believed voters would stay home if Cuccinelli could be linked to the controversy. Cuccinelli lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

With new targeting technology, "You're finding a competitive advantage that just did not exist,'' says Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant and NextGen adviser. "It's a pretty safe bet we'll be involved in it'' in 2014 races.

In 2012, the Obama campaign spent about $1 million on addressable ads in swing states, says Daniel Jester of GMMB Media, the Obama ad agency. That was a fraction of its $450 media budget, but "it did allow us to feel like we were completing the picture of communicating comprehensively with our folks,'' in addition to running TV ads through broadcast networks and cable systems, Jester says.

Online ads target computer users based on where they go online or what they search for, which voters begin to realize when they see the same ad popping up on their laptop repeatedly. But voters targeted via satellite TV won't know that a candidate ad they see was chosen for them more specifically than the beer commercial that follows it.

"It comes across just like they're watching television like they normally would,'' says Paul Guyardo, chief revenue officer for DirecTV. "Meanwhile, the next door neighbor is seeing a totally different ad.''
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