Knives. Are. Out.
Doomscroll 3.12.23
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One Question
This edition of Doomscroll features a Q&A with one of the smartest dudes I’ve met in this business of ours. I asked him a pointed question about some of the problems with paid media, but I feel kinda like crowdsourcing it here as well to see what everyone else thinks. The One Question this week is this: What’s the biggest challenge advertisers face right now?
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about the biggest problem facing P2P text messaging. I got lots of good replies. Here are some of them:
Over saturation. In 4 years texting went from a cool innovation to the equivalent of robo calling.
Transparency - too many folks misuse Short code & P2P standard practices that will likely result in a hammer coming down on our industry in the near future.
Over saturation and no name texts (no brand included)
Transparency and the risk of alienating voters who get a text and their first reaction is "why am I getting this? I didn't sign up for these and now they won't stop!" (even if they have signed up for them.)
Decline in effectiveness because of carrier blocking & spam filters
Clearly, P2P is going the way of every other advertising channel: it’s great, yes, but also has its share of problems (nothing is perfect after all). That said, it falls on us as advertisers and strategists to take steps to fix what we can. I know I’ve said it a million times already, but I’m saying it again: start by identifying yourself in your message! There’s literally no excuse not to.
Who’s Doing What
--Knives Out In Kentucky
Commonwealth PAC, the group supporting Kelly Craft for Governor, released a negative attack ad against Daniel Cameron last week in the Kentucky GOP gubernatorial primary. It was….interesting. The 15-second spot hits Cameron for being too much like a teddy bear (yes, seriously). Last I checked that wasn’t exactly a major dig? But maybe things have changed. Anyway, you can watch it for yourself here. The ad is being run on Google in Louisville, KY. To his credit, Cameron had some fun with it. He temporarily changed his profile pic on Twitter to a teddy bear, and did some fundraising.
One other thing - it wouldn’t be campaign season if someone somewhere didn’t try to make this about race. I’m not saying anyone should take stuff like this seriously, but it happens and should 100% be expected by now. So all you creatives and ad makers need to be careful.
-- Ron DeMoneymaker
What kind of fundraisers would we be if we didn’t all try to use Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in our appeals?? Hmmm? The other day I got an email from DeSantis Republican Alerts (contact@frontlinegopalert.com) telling me I just had to click a link to reserve my copy of DeSantis’ new book, The Courage To Be Free. Only in the disclaimer at the bottom of the WinRed page did it mention it was coming from the Republican State Leadership Committee.
Look, I’m not knocking the RSLC (of their firm, Targeted Victory) for this. When you’re the RSLC, you gotta do what you gotta do to raise those small dollars. I, too, have worked at a non-federal Republican committee, so I get it. But I do have some questions, starting with is the RSLC just buying a bunch of books in bulk and shipping them out to each donor? And if so, how is this profitable (the lowest button amount on there IS $45…yikes)? Also: I wonder what DeSantis world makes of non-DeSantis entities fundraising off his name and book like this. Last but not least, this is the sort of opaque fundraising tactic I’m becoming more and more wary of. It’s reasonable to think a potential donor would believe he or she is contributing to Ron DeSantis by buying this book through this page. But the reality is, they’re donating to the RSLC - a group they’ve probably never heard of. I like to think we can a) treat our donors with a little more respect, and b) still raise money. Right??
--Blast From The Past
Remember Ken Cuccinelli? Yessssssss you do. The once Virginia gubernatorial candidate has launched a new PAC to encourage Ron DeSantis to run for president. He’s got a sleek announcement video you can watch here. You can also text RON to 94398 and get a nice auto-response with a link to the video on YouTube and the PAC’s contact card. A+ The group was also up on day one with search ads to their WinRed page.
Who’s Spending Where
From March 2-8, the top center-right spender on Facebook ads was The Daily Wire, through the Jeremy’s Razors page. They spent a whopping $517,000 hawking razors AND chocolate (IYKYK). Newsmax Media spent just over $212,000 on ads, Daily Wire spent another $153,000ish on promoting stories on its site, and American Action Network spent $105,000 on ads hitting Joe Biden and a handful of House Democrats on cuts to Medicare. PragerU came in fifth place with about $78,000 in spending.
The mysterious Nicholas Perhai was once again the top center-right spender on Google, with an ad selling Trump gold bars. Vivek 2024 came in second with Search ads to his WinRed page. I’m going to award third place to a group called Move Oregon’s Border, which is running a nearly 3-minute long ad explaining why Idaho should take over Oregon’s rural, eastern counties and make them part of the Gem State. I don’t know for sure it’s a Republican group, but it just SEEMS like the kind of proposal us limited-government-minded folks can and should rally around. I suggest we start immediately to get #GreaterIdaho trending. Rounding out the top five this week are Inmo Khang (Trump gold bars) and Judicial Watch.
P2P
Industry Watch
ICYMI, Meta recently released its Q4 2022 Content Report. It includes some interesting tidbits of information, like the fact that 32% of the posts that organically showed up in people’s feeds in Q4 came from friends they were already connected with. Only about 8% of views came from page posts (womp womp).
My take: If this is making you feel cynical about utilizing Facebook in your social media strategy, stop it right now. Gone are the days of creating a page, posting links and graphics, and counting the engagements. Facebook is still a great platform if you can get supporters to talk about your campaign for you. It’s called relational organizing and the right sucks at it. P.S. If you want to talk about this more, drop me a line at itsthedroomscroll@gmail.com.
Via NBC: Conservative social media platforms still blow
My take: I’m officially calling for an end to this experiment with conservative-only tech platforms. Enough already. How much money has been wasted on these things?
The Grapevine
This week we’re doing something a little different in The Grapevine. A few days ago I had a great convo with Adam Wise from National Media and then pretty much swindled him into doing a Q&A for you folks. Enjoy!
What’s your name?
Adam Wise.Ok, that was easy. Where do you work and what do you do?
National Media Insights. Frankly, our goal is to win elections with paid media & use a lot of data in the process.
What's the biggest problem facing advertisers these days?
Defining success; new tactics being defined by campaign results & not their merits. As a result innovation happens at a 2 year clip, assuming the innovative campaigns win. If they lose, it must be the innovation's fault!
Being able to link campaigns to R&F, polls & other real world outcomes heading into Election Day but independent from it, will help us advance faster. Failures will still happen, but separating tactics from macro political trends is key.
How are you trying to fix it?
Trying to advance the ball on media planning, there’s a real opportunity for our party to have a significant technical advantage in 2024.
Name 3 things consultants don’t understand about media planning and measurement.
We don’t buy Gross Rating Points (GRPs) from TV stations, we buy spots that have estimated ratings which are“estimated” by buyers who use data & instinct. Overly optimistic projections lower Cost Per Points but mean you didn’t get what you needed. Low CPPs typically mean less targeted inventory, optimistic ratings & very little sports which is becoming the bulk of live TV. Also having a Nielsen license…is key. It’s akin to your ad fraud meter to make sure your 1000 points are well, a 1000.
Reach numbers for campaigns (especially with low CPPs) are much lower than you’d expect… Samba TV did a study of the top 10 corporate advertisers in America and 55% of their linear impressions went to half the U.S. population (I’m biased b/c I’m on the Agency Advisory Board…) but we replicated the study with 3 dozen House races, a dozen Senate races & a few gubernatorial races the past several years tracking all advertisers across broadcast, cable & CTV… the results were very similar.
Simply put: creativity & data with buying can give a campaign a larger upper hand than ever before. We saw it last cycle with several clients who were outspent, but were able to out-deliver on key KPIs. In practical terms, that means the right messaging is equal in importance to the right placement targeting. A mediocre spot/messaging with great placement is way better than a great spot with mediocre placement. Tree falls in the woods argument.
Sometimes the best targeting is less targeting. Often the best, most attentive & most valuable impressions are sold with less or no audience data. Instead you have to know they're right because of data. Funny enough, that’s how we’ve bought TV for two decades, using data to inform an arbitrage of inventory, buy this airtime to reach the right people. That linear mentality is vital in the digital ecosystem (even with cookies).
Ok...so where does digital advertising specifically fit into all of this? Break it down for us.
Honestly, I don’t see digital or linear, I see impressions & audiences. I don’t know how you can think about linear or digital separately & do what’s right by your client. You have to follow the data, look at the probability of driving home a message - not just platform reach - and understand the limitations of everything.Consumption aside, you also have to back into what’s possible from an advertising perspective & even more importantly what's possible from a “local” advertising perspective, then stack the assets up to achieve an outcome. You don’t want your media plan to look at two outfielders trying not to collide with each other & leaving massive terrain uncovered. If you want a simple formula for success, do as much TV as you want but do 500 points of something else. What that something else is will change throughout the country, but media plans shouldn’t be static; they should update & follow the data. That will be different everywhere but the results can be outstanding.
If you could wave a magic wand and make all campaigns this cycle do ONE THING, what would that one thing be?
If hiring me is an option… that. If not… ask a lot of questions about their media plan, don’t accept it at face value & make sure it’s a “plan” not a ”budget.”
Ok, last one. Brag about something you did last cycle. Go!
Hmm.. built a customized political smart tv panel with 20m households to answer most of the questions I’ve always dreamed about answering (aka deduplicated reach & frequency across all mediums). A client let me park mobile billboards at polling precincts (we crushed it… holy “cao” he was on a truck). We were the first agency to use blockchain-enabled, data clean rooms to onboard data directly with cable providers, AND I adopted my second son. It was an awesome year & I think I forgot the coolest things… gotta save those for ‘24.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Free advice? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
Ugh I hate how much I love this fundraising email from Katie Porter. Her subject line is literally “My recipe for black bean soup.” Wtf, right? And yet, I opened it so fast even I was surprised. Sigh.
From the other side of the tracks:
Via MarketingDive: Wendy’s first to test Roku, DoorDash deal around shoppable TV ads.
A couple months ago I talked to a CTV sales rep who really emphasized how brands are using interactive ads. Campaigns should do this, too. You run an ad, and a sidebar pops up on the screen telling viewers to enter their phone numbers or scan a QR code to get $5 off at the merch store or an exclusive donation link. Just sayin’.
Image via MarketingDive
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!