Hi and welcome back!

The big news this week is the major party presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump have committed to participating in two debates. This surprised many who thought top-of-the-ticket debates may not be happening this cycle.

CNN will host the first debate on June 27th, followed by the second on ABC on September 10th. A vice presidential debate has been offered by sponsor CBS for July 23rd, or August 13th, and the invitation has been accepted by Vice President Kamala Harris.

We hear savvy political marketers are already building plans to reach voters in and around these debates - the first presidential debate in 2020 was watched by 73 million and the second by 63 million.

Also, the North Carolina runoffs and Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia primaries all delivered some surprises last week.  Next up are the Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon primaries tomorrow, Tuesday May 21st.

More below for what’s new, valuable and actionable in political media and CTV.

NEW LG Ad Solutions Report - The Big Shift: Political Edition:  This new report, based on data fielded in Q1 2024, reveals TV viewing behaviors and preferences for CTV users by regional and political affiliations. Highlights: 

• A majority of 63% of viewers now favor streaming over traditional TV, with Independents leading at 70%, followed closely by Democrats and Republicans.
• In the past year, 66% of viewers adjusted their streaming subscriptions to favor ad-supported options, with Democrats leading these changes at 73%.
• A significant 74% of viewers prefer ads that align with their interests—80% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans, and 73% of Independents favor such targeted advertising.

Download the full report today to refine your media strategy and enhance engagement with your target audiences this election cycle.

Heard at C&E’s Digital Campaign Summit Mainstage Talk, hosted by LG Ad Solutions: Empowering Political Marketers: Leveraging OEMs & ACR Data for CTV Campaigns:”

- Taylor Allison, SVP, Media, Gambit Strategies: “With the expansion of both CTV platforms and the amount of people who are cutting the cord, you need to be viewing CTV as also like a broadcast lane versus using CTV just to target niche audiences.  Balancing both the efficiencies you get on CTV as well as the scale makes it a really compelling place to be reaching voters this cycle."

- Christian Curto, Managing Director, Targeted Victory: “CTV and ACR can take an effective media strategy to the next level- where it really changes the game. We’re using ACR now as a way to get into sports. We can get everybody who watched the Cowboys game, and get them later, and get them elsewhere at a much better rate with CTV and ACR.”

- Michael Beach, CEO, Cross Screen Media: “One of the biggest challenges with CTV is making sure that if a voter is only watching five hours of streaming a week let’s say- and that's 20 minutes of ads total for every campaign message, and we want to be two or three of those minutes- we got to be really good and aggressive to find that voter. We got to be in a bunch of streaming, we got to be willing to pay a premium, and we got to be fast.”

Ad-Supported Streaming is Working: Subscription services venturing into ads seems to be working out. According to a Q1 2024 analysis by Antenna, 56% of new SVOD sign-ups were for ad-supported tiers. Peacock, Hulu and Paramount+ seem to be having the most success in attracting ad-supported subscribers. Netflix, normally the king of everything, is still trailing behind. These trends underscore the growing opportunity for campaigns to achieve massive scale with streaming advertising.

If you missed our last issue of this this newsletter - you can check it out here.