The Most Important Data For Every Public Affairs Campaign
Today we begin laying out the many lessons for public affairs campaigns from this year's election cycle. And we start with a lesson that we all saw with our own eyes this year—ads wildly missing their targets.
We saw messages far out of sync with our personal politics, ads from districts we couldn't vote in, and even ads from races in other states. While these ads may be pedagogically interesting to the political nerd class who comprises this newsletter's readership (yes, that includes you) the ads certainly don't help win elections.
These failures are incredibly wasteful in voter campaigns. But when you miss your targets by that much, imagine how much the problem is magnified when you're trying to reach specific policy makers as opposed to hundreds of thousands of voters.
In today's newsletter we show you how to avoid these misses, zero in on your targets, and ensure your message gets seen by the decision-makers.
🔱 Why Campaigns Are Missing Their Targets
There are several reasons that both public affairs and voter campaigns are increasingly missing their targets.
First, the phase out of cookies has led to low match rates on targeting data, and an increasing reliance on contextual targeting. While there's a time and place for contextual, it cannot guarantee that any specific person sees your message—which is precisely what we need to do in public affairs. There is only one committee chair with your bill in her hands. There is only one governor who can sign your bill. And every Member of Congress's vote is precious.
Second, geo-fencing no longer works on the vast majority of platforms because in the past this data was provided by Apple and Google, who no longer share location data.
Third, the old habit of linear TV dies hard. Cable and broadcast zones bear no relationship to political boundaries, and they are a drunken sailor's level waste when targeting specific policy-makers.
🔱 GPS Location Data Ensures You Reach Precisely Your Targets
We can all do better the spraying and praying with our ads, and that starts with GPS location data. This data comes from the countless mobile apps that people share location data with. These apps then resell that data to advertisers, allowing you to achieve GPS-level precision with your ad targeting.
At Neptune Ops, we use data from tens of thousands of apps to maximize our ability to reach targets. Many of the apps are household names like Uber, Instacart, and Amazon who rely on precision data to deliver your food, or pick you up on the correct side of the street. But the data also comes from thousands of weather apps, airline apps, news apps, and dozens of other categories that rely on location data.
We can assure you from our work that EVERYONE shares location data, even governors, member of congress, regulators, and agency heads. If you have any doubts about this, check what location data you're currently sharing and then try turning it all off for a week. Your phone will quickly become an overpriced music player with pictures of your kids and pets.
Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .
With GPS location data, we geo-fence policy-makers on a home-by-home basis to ensure we are reaching your indispensable targets.
So it looks like this . . .
While most other tactics look something like this . . .
We then deliver messages across display, online video, and advertising within apps. And in the world of Connected TV, we now extend this precision to the big screen, reaching policy-makers on dozens of streaming platforms.
🔱 Build Your Campaign's Foundation With GPS Location Data
There are many other tactics to consider when building an effective public affairs campaign, and we'll continue to unpack those tools each week in this newsletter. But think of GPS-based targeting as the foundation of any successful public affairs campaign. Because until you can ensure that you're reaching your exact target, what else really matters? The best creative in the world won't make a difference if the governor you need to sign your bill doesn't see it. The most robust influencer targeting list won't matter if you can't actually reach those influencers. And all the contextual ads you can buy won't drive the outcome you want if your target doesn't happen to be on the site at the specific moment your ad is running.
GPS location data ensures that you get the key eyeballs on your message. Then you can build your campaign on that sturdy foundation.
Three Ways To Operationalize This Email
🔱 Try turning off all of your location data for week and see why this strategy works. But don't miss your Uber to that flight!
🔱 Understand the precise data you are using in your targeting. If it's not GPS location data, you can't ensure you are hitting your targets.
🔱 If you're using cookie-based data, check your match rates. Are you ok with a 30% chance of hitting that committee chair?
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🔱 If you'd like to learn more about how to deploy GPS location data in your work, please contact us today.