Imagine a once in a year grand annual event at school where kids, for months leading up to it, do several rehearsals, stage setups, decoratives, and hype. Once that event is done, everything becomes normal. Regular classes will go on, tests, and scoring will follow eventually.
Isn’t this the case with the U.S. elections! We have adrenaline rush political speeches, ad campaigns & spending grow leaps and bounds. Post elections, things reach normalcy like shifts in consumer behavior patterns, drop in spending, and regulatory changes where all ad tech players need to play their part with dynamically changing markets.
Post Election Dynamics:
- Drop in Ad spend: This can be clearly attributed drop in political ad spending
- Drop in Demand: Once the political season comes to an end, there will be decline in demand can be expected
- Increased ad inventory: Increased availability of inventory
- Lowered ad costs
- Shift in consumer behaviors: During the elections, people are more likely to involve in political news and less involved in typical advertising
- Advertiser Focus Shift: Post-election, the emphasis was on consumer-led campaigns, with lots of emphasis on the holiday season. Retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods companies increased spending, as SSPs needed to remain active in facilitating this shift.
Challenges & Strategies for Ad Tech Stakeholders:
For Publishers:
As consumers start to re-engage with larger interests post election period, the nature of content consumption changes to lifestyle, entertainment, travel, shopping, and holiday planning etc.
- Diversification of content & Revenue streams: Publishers are advised to offer the evergreen, high-demand, health related topics to catch up with the changing dynamics.
- Audience retention: Should invest in audience retention. Practices like Email campaigns, personalized notifications and messaging can help to sustain traffic.
- Inventory Optimizations: With the election-ad demand drops, revisiting & recalibrating the pricing strategies for apolitical domains like entertainment, shopping, travel, finance, educational content would make more sense to yield profits.
- Audience Segmentation: Can create tailor-made ad experience for the users using first party data to make them engage with post-election trends.
For Advertisers:
As there will be a shift in ad spending due to diminishing political spend, consumer brands should step back into the light.
- Re-assessing messages: Shifting to inclusive, purpose-driven like product or service oriented messaging will help to reconnect with diverse audiences.
- Changing ‘Message of the ads’ can help to grab the attention of consumers
- Focused message themes like: holidays oriented, special offers etc
- Change in keywords – non political, trendy, buzzwords etc can be helpful
- Dynamic budget allocation: Redirecting funds to high-demand verticals like technology, e-commerce, and Consumer packaged goods (CPG), and entertainment etc will work. Launching new products, building customer loyalty, and aiming for long term customer retention can be a focus area
- Leveraging targeting: Have to capitalize the demand in popular trends like shopping, gifting, holidays, through proper targeting strategies to maximize user conversions in high conversion phases.
- Based on the renewed or updated consumer profiles and the use of contextual targeting, working with Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) accordingly can be profitable.
- Multichannel Campaigns: Advertisers should adopt holistic approaches that utilize CTV and programmatic DOOH to maintain reach and relevance to ad campaigns.
For SSPs:
- Managing Inventory Demand: High-spending political campaigns frequently reserved premium ad slots, leaving non-political advertisers at a disadvantage. SSPs were forced to manage their inventory to balance efforts to adhere to a broader client base with the demands of high-spending political campaigns.
- Ad Quality and Compliance: The political advertisements raised issues of transparency and compliance in terms of their management. SSPs have to ensure that all political advertisements comply with the set regulatory requirements, including funding source disclosure and adherence to acceptable policies by the platform.
- Feature-Rich Inventory Allocation: SSPs required dynamic allocation algorithms to strike a balance between political and non-political advertisers. Features such as priority tiers, frequency capping, and auction optimizations ensured equal opportunities at high-value slots while maximizing profit.
- Transparency and Compliance Tools: To counter issues arising from regulatory compliance, SSPs made investments in the following area:
- Automated Ad Review Systems: the political ad had to meet defined compliance thresholds
- Real-Time Reporting: It provides transparent data to publishers and buyers regarding monitoring performance and compliance.
- DOOH and CTV: DOOH and CTV were substantial revenue opportunities during the election cycle. By including these channels, SSPs gave campaigns high-visibility inventory offerings, including digital billboards, transit screens, and streaming services.
- Training Clients: SSPs assisted the marketers by providing information on election-induced trends and approaches. Data on variations in CPM, top-performing geos, and available inventory ensured campaign optimizations.
- Publisher Requirements: SSPs must be aware of the publisher’s requirements and must have a system that allows the publisher to review and approve the creatives one by one. The SSPs can also review the creatives on behalf of the publishers so that it meets their requirements and criteria.
Conclusion:
The climax of U.S. elections in 2024 marked a new record in terms of ad spending and it is likely to increase in such future events. This has been a landmark moment for several ad tech players. Publishers changing their content and inventory strategies, advertisers re-engaging viewers with relevant campaigns, and SSPs innovating to keep inventory value are some important areas to work on. Adopting ever changing market dynamics & insights, guided by data and executing right strategies will define success in the dynamic phase.
The DataBeat Advantage:
DataBeat with expertise on all streams, its proficiency in dealing with ever increasing dynamic changes and a dedicated R&D team always learning new concepts that are evolving within the scope of ad tech industry can efficiently catch up, handle & build strategies to the changes such as pre & post election periods to yield optimal benefit, can make quick Ad Ops alterations, while complying with all the policies relevant to all stakeholders. So, DataBeat is a one place to go kind of company to sort issues.
