Burn It Down?
Doomscroll 9.15.2024
Hello. Welcome to another edition of Doomscroll. The debate happened. Yeah, it did. And I’ve done puh-lenty of doomscrolling this week. So why not do a little more? Let’s get to it!
This week’s Doomscroll is sponsored by RumbleUp!
One Question
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about how you plan to use P2P text messaging between now and Election Day. 50% of you said you plan to use it mostly for fundraising. 37% said you plan to use P2P for a mix of fundraising and persuasion. Cool. As far as the Bonus Question is concerned…whether or not you care about the fact that voters are fed up and frustrated with all the texts…Here are some of your comments!
I do care. But housefile vs p2p vs revenue share is the issue. Some campaigns manage house file and p2p well, but revenue share texting is whats overwhelming our donors
We need to do it more thoughtfully. I get the same Ted Cruz text every day. Show more than just a winred page sometimes. Show donors you aren’t all about money all the time. Show them an update from the trail, a new article, or something the campaign did!
I do not care. And I will take advantage of our ability to absolutely destroy phones carriers and phone companies fix it. We wouldn't do this if it didn't work.
I don't think anyone cares as evidenced by the same text messages getting recycled on and on. Until voters get smart and spend $2 on a texting app filter (which works great BTW), it will just be one giant annoyance.
Yes - It makes me concerned for the longevity of the industry. If donors get annoyed at us and stop donating then we all have to get new jobs
Cannot care if you want to raise as much money as possible - sorry donors!
Voters are fed up, but it's still effective. Eventually another method will take over and we'll all switch to that and texting will go the way of email.
Woof. I’m a BIT surprised by how many of you were like “eh, whatevs, let’s BURN IT ALL DOWN.” I think we need to remember that we live in digital political bubbles that the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans don’t even know exist. If we care about the longevity of our industry and the future of online fundraising, we should care about our customers and their overall customer experience. It’s called creating loyalty and all that. Just my two cents!
Ok: this week’s One Question is super simple. Donald Trump has said no to another presidential debate. Is he right? Or does he need another crack at the egg? I’m going to tell you what I think: Dude needs a do-over. It literally can’t get any worse so what’s he got to lose? YOLO, AMIRITE
Who’s Doing What
—New(?) Kids On the Block
I don’t know much about Duty to America PAC. I don’t really think anyone else does either, aside from maybe the team at IMGE who, per FEC reports, looks to be doing their digital (shout-out IMGE!). That said, I’m impressed with what I’ve been seeing out of this group on the ads front. They’re running search and video ads about nicotine pouch bans in battleground states like Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, which is so niche but shows they’re working hard to turn out votes. The group’s video creative is super interesting to me. They don’t come across as typical political ads. For example: They’re serving one on Youtube called “$50: Not Enough” that doesn’t seem political at all until you get to the very end. But the entire lead-up is still about reminding people that a dollar (or 50) doesn’t go as far as it used to…and who’s fault is that, by the way??? It’s good. The creative on Facebook is top-notch as well. There, the messaging seems to be all about how politicians make promises they don’t keep…so reject Kamala Harris. It’s really good stuff. Also fwiw, and I don’t think this aspect of the creative process gets talked about enough, I love the choice of using a young-ish male in the voiceovers. It’s such a departure from most conservative ads and I like it. If I were to ding the PAC on one thing about their digital presence, it would be the website. The form is at the very bottom, I don’t see any donate button (is that on purpose?) and the farther you scroll down, the more “meh” the copy becomes. But still - love what this group is doing!
—WTF
Seriously, does anyone know wtf BS Promotions LLC is? The group popped up on the Facebook ad library this week with some ads linking to this and this. They’re running on a page called Proud Patriotic American, and are clearly center-right. But I just have to ask: What does it say about the state of GOP ad spending 50 days out from Election Day when this kind of advertiser spent the second-most amount of money on Facebook ads this week?
—Can I get $5?
Is it really happening? Maybe? You know how I’ve been preaching about relational organizing for a while…(Dems do it; we don’t). A loyal reader sent me a screenshot this week of what looks to be an effort on the part of the NRSC and/or the Kari Lake campaign on the Numinar app. I like it. Also: they’re telling people they’ll get $5 for every friend they text? Would love to know more about that…Is it an NRSC expenditure? Questions, questions, I have them!
Who’s Spending Where
P2P
Guess what, friends!? We’re doing something different here this week! Remember when I said I was going to re-think this section? Instead of presenting screenshots of what people are texting, I thought I’d pick one text each week that I think is good and effective and explain why! First up is this message from the Larry Hogan campaign.
Here’s why I think it’s good:
It has a candid photo of the candidate on the campaign trail. Like.
He identifies with his audience right at the top. Nice. Oh, and he identifies HIMSELF which a lot of campaigns don’t do and drives me crazy.
He’s got a clean pivot to his message (too much noise in D.C.), and his ask is straightforward and simple and there’s no DRAMA or guilt trip.
I’d consider this a nice combo of persuasion and fundraising. Two birds; one stone.
The WinRed page is also nice. Good message that actually matches his text.
A+!
Industry Watch
Ok so this is really cool. National Media released a new contextual targeting tool to help campaigns reach swing voters. You can read about it in C&E here…OR get it straight from the horse's mouth! That’s right: I reached out to my pal Adam Wise to get the lowdown in layman’s terms.
Doomscroll: So what are you doing here? Who can use this? Explain, please!
Campaigns of any size! It’s designed to add incrementality to large campaigns and be a force multiplier for smaller campaigns.We’re taking live polling data and connecting it to what people are reading online, and using their own behavior to find out who's a swing voter. And it updates throughout the day. We’re using what you consume over the last month to decide if you’re persuadable.
Traditional micro-targeting using offline data have, at best, a thousand fields that refresh quarterly often with very minimal changes. Here, we’re talking about a voter reading 540 stories in a month. Using data on who the publisher is, the title of the story & the words within the story we now have 70k+ data points each month. Brass tacks… we’re indexing 100 million pages a month, 200 billion page views resulting in 70k data points per voter per month.We’re able to create more recent, more relevant data for building audiences with more scale.
Doomscroll: Go on…
Let’s talk match rates – there’s a few problems. First is well, actual match rates. People confuse recognition with actual matches…Your data matches to an identity spine (liveramp, nuestar, etc.), but doesn’t mean they’re found at the end destination (i.e. a DSP or publisher). So congrats LiveRamp or others have recognized 90% of my audience, your end destination might only have 40%. That’s the first problem. The second and even bigger problem is you’ve now found 90% of 40% of your audience, so you’re excited to advertise to 36% of your target. Industry leading identity solutions cover less than HALF of CTV impressions. And we’re shocked when we get back small avails. This is a solution to solve that. How can we figure out which of the other impressions are worthwhile… heck that’s over half.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise but an awesome consequence: you’re able to win more bids cheaper! Recent campaigns have seen up to a 40% reduction in CPMs & 25% reduction in eCPC versus similar offline segments.
Doomscroll: What else should we know?
This is just the beginning of this technology. We’re making available segments for people who are reading about cost of living, immigration, crime - and even people reading about particular candidates. Instead of saying this person looks like someone who is “moved” on cost of living, you can just target your 1P list (or ours) with people who are reading related topics. Same idea, but different angle: Imagine you need to solve name ID problems & you can talk to only likely voters who haven’t read about your candidate. Heck we can even in near real time (seconds) process new traffic on websites in a crisis communications situation & respond directly to people who have read the story. We can even pixel conversion pages and do something really special… what did a donor look at the moment of donation. We can build semantic profiles for an ever expanding number of use cases.
Thanks, Adam!
2024 Watch
This is where I make note of a few other things that caught my eye this week.
Nice fundraising hauls for the House GOP last month. Yay! Read about it here.
I like this new ad from Eric Hovde, hitting Tammy Baldwin for being the third senator from New York. Watch it here.
Came across another GOP candidate with an ad explicitly calling for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare.” This time, it’s Matt Gunderson in California. Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess! I mean, it does seem like an effective message and I like the pivot to other issues at the end. Watch it here.
Cook Political Report moved the Montana Senate race to “Lean Republican.” Read about it here.
Chris LaCavita posted a great video trolling Kamala Harris for copying Joe Biden’s policy page onto her website. Watch it here.
According to AdImpact, streaming and YouTube TV made up 47% of the viewership of the presidential debate. Not surprising!
You may know about our reputation in texting for superior delivery, technology, customer service and compliance, but did you know RumbleUp is also competitively priced and saves oodles of hassle? Our 3,000 clients (and counting) know. Find out how RumbleUp delivers more for less today. Get in touch.
The Grapevine
WinRed is giving conduit accounts faster payouts! Read about it here.
Targeted Victory now counts X as a client…Apparently, they’re handling “messaging” for X around its ban in Brazil.
Weird story in Semafor about influencers on the right pushing “sexual smears” about Kamala Harris…
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
Raise your hand if you were getting text messages from Democrat groups and campaigns on debate night in the 10 PM, 11 PM, 12 AM and even 1 AM hours of the night. I get the sense of urgency, but 1 AM? Either Dems have also embraced the “burn it down” mentality, or carriers were so jammed with traffic that messages just got delayed. Something tells me though, that the former is more accurate. The same can’t be true for Republicans. I’m on a LOT of lists - a LOT - and I got zero texts from Republicans post-debate during those late hours.
Anyway, I reached out to our friends at RumbleUp to get their take on the situation, and here’s what Amanda Pope, Vice President of Messaging Operations, had to say:
Democrats don't seem to be concerned about the late text messages. In fact, I think they had one go out at 1AM during the convention. I think this is a bad campaign practice because of the disregard it is showing for the audience AND it reflects poorly on the political messaging ecosystem as a whole. It’s possible Democrat campaigns just don’t care or their vendors don’t block late sending or understand the time it takes for a message to get through the ecosystem with the various carrier/aggregator rate limits in place.
At the end of the day though, late messages could lead to more complaints, which could lead to phone carriers cracking down on political text messaging. THat’s NOT what the industry needs in the run-up to Election Day.
There you have it!
From the other side of the tracks:
Marketing Dive has a great piece about how Wrangler is re-embracing its Western / country heritage with a new ad titled “Good Mornings Make for Better Days.” Here’s a bit I found compelling:
Authenticity remains a watchword for marketers, and Wrangler is no different. Being true to its Western roots put the brand in position to seamlessly capitalize on trends in fashion and music, putting it in a better position than brands that try to chase trends. …“You could call it luck, but I think it’s been good planning,” Meagher explained. “Even when we do collaborations with brands, we always want to make sure that there is a level of authenticity to the collaboration… We’re not trying to be someone we’re not.”
And on the company’s ad strategy:
“Strategically, I think it’s a similar approach — the media is just sitting in a different place, like it might be a display ad on Amazon or paid search on Walmart or Google search,” Meagher explained. “They’re all different tactics that are doing similar jobs, just converting where the consumer wants to convert.
“Our brand has so many consumers with so many different needs, and I think that’s one of the beauties of Wrangler,” the exec continued. “It’s also one of the complexities of it: making sure that we understand who our consumer is and meet them where they are.”
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!