A recent survey by Centro, a Chicago and Toronto-based programmatic ad buying firm, says that political ad buyers are worried about a range of issues this political year. The know there are landmines out there, they’re just not sure when they’re going to go off.
To which Spot-On says, “d’uh”.
It isn’t easy for local news outlets to focus on how things have gone wrong in the digital political advertising market – bad enough those guys are hijacking readers and revenue – but it’s increasingly important. Every platform failure – and they are numerous – becomes a local news selling point. So here’s the survey rundown to help you get started.
The biggest worry for political buyers: Changes platforms have made for political ads (81% say this is a big problem) and corresponding concerns about the ability to target voters on the minds of most buyers (66%).
Local solution: Clear and consistent standards and practices along with demographic information about your readers.
Next up: Getting clients to pay attention to digital (64%) or increase budgets (55%).
Local solution: Ads that clients can see on outlets they regularly read help convince campaigns that digital is “real”.
Some political buyers are worried that Covid-19 news is a distraction for voters (53%). We actually don’t think this is as big a deal because Covid-related news is driving the surge in online searches for information.
Local solution: Not that many brands want to sponsor your Covid newsletters or pages. Pitch political on those sections ability to reach voters, especially women.
Next up: Brand safety and ad fraud worries (40% each).
The local solution is a no-brainer. It’s nice to be able to offer real, not fake, news, isn’t it?
Lastly, changing state and federal regulation (38%) has buyers worried.
Local news solution: Clear and consistent enforcement of the law. Which means you need to have sales folks educated about those laws.
Now, for many races, the 2020 sales window is closing. But the trend is clearly moving back to context-based buying for this market. Spot-On wants to help local sites grow and increase their political ad revenue; we’ve even built an ad buying platform to capture this revenue.
Want to learn more? Drop us a line and let us show how our new ad buying platform puts your site in front of political buyers with money to spend.
