Chances are good that – as a local news publisher – you don’t think of yourself as a master gardener.
You should. Because the walled garden you’ve been building behind your subscriber paywall is filled with data riches, especially for political ad buyers.
Political candidates, advocacy organizations and public affairs ad buyers like Spot-On care first and foremost about location for a very simple reasons: You can only vote where you live.
So a public affairs effort challenging – or supporting – local zoning laws, a candidate running for school board or a corporation hoping to assuage regulators ready to impose fines or penalties all care very much about your audience. Unlike almost all other digital ads buying geography is paramount.
That’s becoming more important as privacy laws, along with increasingly sophisticated user filtering for email and text solicitations make it harder for behavior based ad buys to have an impact in the political market.
Your first party and subscriber data is fast increasing in value. And the more you know about those readers in a political context, the better.
Here’s an example: Last year, Spot-On ran a property tax ballot measure campaign. Our ads were flagging a bit until one local publisher offered to use their first party data to target readers likely to be homeowners. With that targeting in place, click-through engagements rates edged up.
Surveys of publications of all sizes in various markets all show that an overwhelming number of readers are voters – in some places as high as 80%. But it can vary, of course, so it’s good to have your number on hand.
Since political campaigns in particular like to economize their media spends by narrowing their targets they have come to rely on matching efforts from programmatic firms for their digital ad buys. That’s a big part of why local news has only been able to capture a small percentage of the billions of political dollars spent on digital ads.
But that trend looks like it’s peaked. Use of popular online platforms like Facebook and Twitter is fading. And while streaming TV can be target sometimes very effectively, it’s limited in reach. And political buyers are uncomfortable with the ‘black box’ approach to sales. Many popular platforms – Tik-Tok, NextDoor, AppleTV, Netflix and Amazon Prime don’t allow political ads.
So its high season for local news outlets who can talk about their readers through a political lens.
Step one: How many of your subscribers are voters?
It’s not hard. You have subscriber addresses. Match that spreadsheet against the county’s (free) voter rolls. Want to dig a bit deeper? Match the voter registration information against party affiliation. You’ll know how many Republicans, Democrats and Independents you have as readers.
To be sure, there are privacy considerations. In some states – California is one – it’s illegal to use voter info for commercial purposes. And these data sets should be protected form that sort of misuse. But the law is generally more lenient when it comes to talking to voters on behalf of elected officials or public affairs debates and conversations. Used properly this in-house research can pay off.
Knowing more about the voters in your walled garden can help your publications start to capture the dollars spent on ‘spray and pray’ programmatic ads, social media and connected streaming TV.
Local news outlets with information on hand about voters who are readers and subscribers look more like a little patch of Eden, not a hard scrabble former parking lot.
Want more info? Drop us a note.
