It’s beginning to look as though the “wild west” of political ad sales is getting tamed.
No six shooters needed, this go-round. Just a lot of frustration – too much to go around – is making ad platforms aware of something news outlets know in their souls: paid political speech is different from brand advertising and must be sold and trafficked accordingly.
The big news last week was at the Congressional hearing on Big Tech. But a few days earlier, Google, Hulu, Facebook and Verizon (which now owns the still-popular Yahoo!) actually looked at this ad and decided not to run it. And at the end of the week Adobe announced that it had cancelled its contracts with political ad buyers.
Political campaigns have long used programmatic ad placements as a way – knowingly or not – avoid editorial review and evade disclosures and disclaimers on political campaigns. That’s why Google and Facebook claim to have pulled their political ad offerings out of some states.
There’s more change coming between now and the election as short cuts taken for granted by many online advertisers get closed off. Here are two more important changes, that like the Adobe news, will help publishers sell directly to campaigns.
Increased awareness of user privacy – and the desire to make sure its customers know it’s worried about their privacy – has Apple increasing protections against ad tracking. This won’t come with new phone purchases. Privacy protections will be part of Apple’s next software updates scheduled for mid-September.
Then, there’s Facebook. It seems like there’s always Facebook, doesn’t it? On July 12, Facebook announced that the dashboard buttons allowing users to block political ads were fully in place. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to realize that the more political ads a Facebook user sees, the more likely they’ll be to block those ads.
Which means one favored way to target voters – the only one that openly permits ‘micro-targeting’ – just got a lot less effective for both political parties. That’s an opportunity for established news outlets.
Another opportunity: When it’s not beating up on billionaires, Congress is making odd noises about election interference. And others are – perhaps not coincidentally – looking at the likelihood that there will be political ad fraud this year. It’s considered all but certain.
And, not to be outdone, the US Post Office is warning of a series of crises over mail delivery. Congress is in on this, too because USPS is warning that it may not be able to get ballots to everyone who wants one for voting at home or by mail.
Put another way, the market is moving in the direction of encouraging direct political ad buying. There’s still work to be done – platforms have all kinds of data about their users that news outlets haven’t bothered to collect. Which means now’s the time to start thinking about researching your subscriber base. How many are registered voters? The outlets that can answer that question will win political ad dollars this year and in years to come.
Need help figuring out how to prepare? Give us a shout. Spot-On has been encouraging our political and advocacy clients to buy direct for more than 10 years.
We can make some of your digital headaches go away and maybe make you a few bucks along the way.
