Political advertising spending is estimated to hit record levels this election cycle. For anyone living in the US, this doesn’t come as a surprise.
What is surprising, though, is the staggering amount of money political campaigns are estimated to spend on digital advertising: upwards of $12 billion, according to eMarketer. That’s a 182% increase from the $4.25 billion spent on digital advertising in 2016.
This flood of cash into the digital advertising landscape creates a maelstrom of challenges for advertising agencies, particularly those working on behalf of small and medium-sized businesses. Agencies must navigate an intensely competitive landscape while achieving outstanding results for their clients. Effective, agile ad strategies have never been more important.
Syncing your advertising strategy via automation tools is the best combo attack move that agencies can make during competitive political cycles. This approach enables agencies to optimize spend and performance continuously without requiring constant manual intervention.
Let’s unpack the specific challenges facing agencies during the intense 2024 election cycle and how automation can help you overcome them.
Seize local inventory with real-time monitoring
As we get closer to November, political campaigns will buy up every open ad space they can find. If you’re an agency running campaigns in a battleground state, it’s going to start feeling like the Wild West.
Localized campaigns are going to feel the ad inventory crunch the most in the coming weeks. Even if you’re not specifically targeting the same audiences, there’s only so much ad inventory at the local level.
Programmatic media provides a great opportunity to get in front of local audience, and incorporate into your multichannel mix if you haven’t done so already. Programmatic gives agencies the ability to amplify reach and engagement across a wide variety of mediums, improving the likelihood that you’ll find a gap in the noise.
In addition to adopting programmatic channels, your agency must be agile enough to respond when space is available at the right price. Automation can extend your capacity and monitor for spikes in demand 24/7/365. Your ad teams don’t have to constantly babysit channels (or even think about them!), waiting for opportunities to arise.
In short, automation ensures that your clients’ messages are pushed across multiple channels when the right scenarios arise—even during the most competitive times.
Mitigate rising costs with automatic budget reallocation
Like any supply-demand scenario, limited inventory means increased prices. Some experts estimate that CPMs could increase anywhere from 20-50% for social channels in the six weeks leading up to election day.
Agencies have to make a tough decision about how to mitigate these higher costs with their clients. Do you pass them on to your clients or find a way to absorb them in-house?
With automation, you don’t have to choose. Automation can lessen the financial blow by continuously monitoring and reallocating advertising budgets, allowing for immediate adjustments based on up-to-the-second performance data.
One of the hallmarks of automation is that it is very, very good at following rules. Agencies can set and validate cost thresholds dynamically, ensuring campaigns remain within budget while optimally performing.
This is particularly important if you’re pairing automation with programmatic. Once your rules are established, automation can infinitely replicate what you want to be done across multiple channels.
Automated budgeting workflows free up your team from manually refreshing data and moving spend around. They also ensure you’re generating the best possible results for your clients during an expensive season.
Continuously optimize with real-time adjustments
Our partners at Basis estimate that a whopping 50% of political ad dollars are spent in the 30 days leading up to an election. What are those 30 days going to look like to your analysts if they’re trying to manually drive results in such an intense environment?
Being able to quickly buy ad space when the right conditions arise is a must. But navigating and responding to the “right conditions” is nearly impossible for your analysts to do manually. The complexity of all these moving parts can cause an uptick in errors. That makes your client and your team upset.
One of the standout features of Fluency’s platform is the ability to implement AI-powered strategies for real-time campaign management. Imagine an automated system tirelessly working to assess campaign outcomes. The system can reallocate resources to peak-performing ads while continuously monitoring the competitive landscape. Traditional, manual digital advertising processes simply cannot match the level of efficiency and scalability that automation brings to the table.
Your teams still play an active—and pivotal—role in shaping the strategy behind all these optimizations. They are the ones informing automation rules about what to do and when to do it. Automation doesn’t remove the human touch from digital advertising: it makes it so your teams can actually have a hand in the strategy.
Leveraging automation for election season success
As election season approaches, the financial stakes are higher than ever for agencies to deliver client results. Incorporating automation and AI tools is key to navigating this complex terrain.
Utilizing automation can help agencies go from merely enduring the election cycle to actively thriving within it. Teams can respond to real-time data insights and make strategic adjustments that deliver exceptional value to clients.
Bringing programmatic advertising into your toolbox is another great way to enhance the overall efficacy of campaigns, particularly for localized efforts.
There’s still time to implement these solutions before the digital advertising landscape goes full-blown Mad Max in October. Reach out to our teams for a customized demo to learn how Fluency’s platform can help you maximize results in Q4 without pushing employee burnout into overdrive.
