Digital Budgets Are Overwhelming Direct Mail This Cycle—Where Does Yours Stand?

Time is precious for everyone working on campaigns, so we'll make this our shortest newsletter of the year. But despite our curtness, our point is as critical, albeit blunt, as anything you will hear about this year's campaigns.

Digital Campaign Spending Is Outpacing Direct Mail Spending By Nearly 6-1.

Each of us knows that the way we consume information has dramatically changed in recent years. The average American now spends 7-10 HOURS per day on screens, but only 8 MINUTES per day reading physical mail. And even this 8 minute number drastically overstates the available eyeball time for political mail, because the vast majority of those minutes involve paying bills, reading credit card offers to help pay those bills, and spying on your neighbor's home values to make you feel better about paying those bills.

Consumer advertising has long reflected this reality. Campaign advertising is now reflecting this reality as well. This year, digital campaign spending is on track to outpace direct mail spending by nearly 6-1.

Sources: GroupM’s This Year Next Year 2024 Midyear Global Advertising Forecast, Axios, citing GroupM projections for 2024 political ad spending, AdImpact’s 2024 Political Spending Projections report.

We recently wrote about how Vice President Harris's campaign, flush with more money than any campaign in history, has devoted the lion's share of that money to digital. We asked: "If a campaign flush with over half a billion in cash can’t afford to waste money on traditional advertising—can you?"

The answer for an increasing number of campaigns at every level seems to be a definitive NO. In addition to the fact that digital content is how voters consume the vast majority of their information, here's two other key reasons that campaigns are choosing digital over direct mail this cycle:

🔱  The price of one piece of direct mail is now the same price as 16, 30 second Connected TV ads.

Dilate on that for a few seconds. It means that to get the same eyeball minutes per dollar with direct mail v. Connected TV, the voter would need to read and re-read the mail piece for all 8 minutes of their total mail consumption time. And only then would it equate to the 16, 30 second non-skippable video ads that a campaign can deliver for the same price. 

🔱  40-60% of the addresses in the voter file are wrong, a problem that cannot be fixed with direct mail, but can be fixed with digital.

So to operationalize this email, we suggest three candid questions to ask yourself:

🔱  How much are you spending on direct mail v. digital this cycle?  

🔱  If you're overweighting mail, what do you know that thousands of campaigns across the country don't? 

🔱  Are you ready to explain your answers to the first two questions the morning after the election?

It's not too late to rebalance those overweighted budgets.

🔱  If you're enjoying this content, please consider forwarding this email to a colleague or friend. If you'd rather not forward it because you think the content makes you seem smarter compared to that annoying co-worker . . . respect.

🔱  If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up here to stay up to date on the latest developments in political technology.

🔱  If you'd like to learn more about how the latest digital tools can help your campaign, contact us today.