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The Power of Programmatic Advertising for Political Campaigns

Updated: Jul 29, 2022


Political advertising in America is nothing new. Political parties arose within a decade following George Washington's nonpartisan election to the presidency. Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, and, lastly, Republicans were the options for voters in 1854. Presidential candidates did not travel to campaign at first: they were nominated, but it was unacceptable to encourage voters to vote for them personally.

As a result, local supporters were tasked with organizing campaign events and speaking on their behalf. On Election Day, voter drives in pubs and on the roadways followed parades, marches, and stump speeches by surrogates. Partisan publications were another factor, aligning themselves with a specific political party and openly skewing news coverage to favor allies while excoriating rivals.

During this time, political symbols began to emerge. Although Thomas Nast is credited with popularizing the donkey to represent the Democrats and the elephant to represent the Republicans, the donkey first appeared during Andrew Jackson's 1828 campaign when he was branded as a "jackass." By adopting the donkey for its merits, he turned the tables on his foes.

After the Civil War, Nast reinstated the donkey and the elephant as Republican symbols. His cartoons and those of his forefathers and colleagues were widely disseminated in mass-market periodicals, newspapers, and as individual sheet prints and are attributed to swaying voters at a time when most would never have seen or witnessed their presidential candidate speaking in person.

Instead, they read campaign literature and went to picnics, barbecues, parades, town hall meetings, and rallies. Campaign songs about candidates fit right along with a culture that valued singing. In some form or another, many of these early voter recruitment activities are still used in presidential campaigns presently.

However, there have been many changes since then. Today's political campaigns are increasingly reliant on the internet. Civic groups can communicate more quickly and reach a wider audience using mass-communication tools like email, websites, and podcasts for various types of involvement. These Internet tools are utilized for fundraising, lobbying, volunteering, community building, and organizing for charitable causes. Individual political candidates are also promoting their election campaigns on the internet. Politicians acknowledged using social media for marketing and engagement with people in a study of Norwegian electoral campaigns. Facebook was the main promotional medium, while Twitter was used for more constant communication.

The use of digital technology for political campaigns is only expanding from there. Have you considered using programmatic for political ads, for example? With the elections approaching and digital marketing spending expanding throughout all sectors, political ad spending is likely to increase significantly by 2022. As a result, there's no better time than now to start using programmatic advertising in your election campaigns.


What is Programmatic Advertising

Instead of using a human to purchase digital advertising space, programmatic advertising uses artificial intelligence. The goal is to increase the accountability and efficiency of both the advertising and the publisher. RTB, or real-time bidding, accomplishes this by purchasing advertising at the same time a visitor loads a page.

Programmatic targeting allows you to find and reach high-frequency consumers across the internet, increasing the likelihood of content completion. You can reach a larger audience with programmatic advertising. We can leverage Google's content, and the majority of other paid advertising on the internet at 7Social. Beyond Google, there are many other sources, and our technology can access them all.

How to Use Programmatic Advertising for Political Campaigns

Make Use of Geotargeting

Geofencing is a type of geotargeting. Although both geofencing and geotargeting are part of location-based marketing, they serve different functions. Meanwhile, geofencing simply includes constructing a virtual fence around a given geographic region; geotargeting entails employing a variety of parameters (including geofencing) to reach specific individuals!

How Does Geofencing Work

An administrator or programmer must first create a virtual barrier around a specific area in GPS- or RFID-enabled software before using geofencing. When designing a smartphone app, this can be as simple as a ring- 100 feet around a location on Google Maps, as defined using APIs. When an approved device enters or quits that region, as set by the administrator or programmer, the artificial geofence will trigger a response.

Geotargeting Your Audience

Marketers use geofences and mobile advertising to reach their target audiences depending on their present location to provide ads in real-time or their historical location to serve ads later. Behaviors, interests, and other factors determine the audience. For instance, you want to reach fathers. You can place a geofence around a set neighborhood and then set up your ads to push to males aged 18-45 who have at least one kid.


Understand Your Target Audience's Voice

Everyday language differs from one state to the next and country to another. Investigate regional dialects to ensure that the language you employ in your