This Innovator Spotlight article is an outtake from our newest TVREV Special Report, Political Advertising On CTV, 2024 which you can download for free.

“This is my sixth election cycle and third presidential race," says Erik Brydges, Head of Political Demand at Magnite. “The role of streaming has changed dramatically since 2014 when Connected TV (CTV) wasn't even on media plans. Back then, we were still in a world where people were talking about separating web and mobile line items. Now, everyone is talking about CTV in our conversations with buyers.”

ALAN WOLK (AW): How has the role of streaming in political advertising evolved over recent election cycles?

ERIK BRYDGES (EB): In 2020, there were some minor opportunities to leverage CTV, but not in a highly targeted way. By 2022, we saw significant scale in CTV inventory, allowing for data layering without completely sacrificing scale. Now in 2024, buyers are really focusing on maximizing access to TV inventory to reach valuable voters.

There's now significant momentum around understanding the ecosystem and investing in it. The conversation has shifted from "What is CTV?" to "How can we maximize our CTV strategy?"

AW: Has interest in CTV advertising moved from national campaigns to more local races?

EB: There's general interest across the board, but CTV is especially well-positioned for local and down-ballot elections. The ability to geo-target by zip code provides access to smaller campaigns whose geographical areas often don't align well with DMAs. (Designated Market Areas). 

This is particularly relevant in bigger media markets like New York, DC, or LA, where the cost of traditional TV advertising can be prohibitive for local campaigns.

CTV makes it more accessible for these campaigns to get their video ads onto the largest screen in voters' homes, something previously challenging with broadcast TV due to budget constraints. Just being able to reach the zip code level, even without additional data layering, provides valuable access to these smaller campaigns.

AW: What strategies do you recommend for political campaigns to maximize engagement on streaming platforms?

EB: The primary strategy we recommend is understanding how to get the most direct access to the largest amount of inventory. As a supply-side platform, Magnite represents premium CTV inventory and powers many vendors in the space. We provide insight into accessing the most inventory while streamlining the process.

We show buyers graphically how they can access all opportunities to communicate with voters. This is crucial because not all publishers accept political advertising, and some provide different monetization opportunities to different entities. 

Buying from just one publisher might seem like you're getting 100% coverage, but you're likely leaving a lot on the table – which matters when elections are won or lost by single-digit percentages. We can show campaigns that there might be 14 different ways to access advertising inventory around high-quality content, and we can provide access to all of it in one place.

AW: How are you measuring the effectiveness of CTV political advertising?

EB:  We focus on reach and viewership. With eyeballs rapidly shifting from linear TV to streaming, we constantly provide the market with research and data on where and how quickly these shifts are occurring. This is especially important for politics, where the goal is to reach specific demographics and audiences.

We've conducted political research showing how much time different generations spend with ad-supported streaming. Unsurprisingly, it's incredibly popular with Gen Z, but even older generations, including Boomers, are spending significant time with ad-supported streaming. The key message is: if you want to reach voters where they are, ad-supported streaming is taking an increasingly large piece of consumer attention.

AW: How does programmatic advertising work for political campaigns on your platform?

EB: As a supply-side technology, we build the fundamental technology publishers need to manage their inventory, demand, yields, and different pricing structures. How inventory is made available depends on the publisher's preferences, which we can support in various ways.

Generally, for streaming, most publishers want control over pricing and a more direct relationship with buyers. So, the majority of transactions happen through private marketplace deals. For some media owners wanting more control, we might use programmatic guaranteed executions, which are more like contracts between the agency or campaign and the media owner, but still transacted through our pipes.

We operate on a "choose your own adventure" model. If a campaign shows up on a Friday in October with a large budget due to a sudden event, we can accommodate various approaches – from managed service execution to setting up deals for their in-house programmatic teams, to providing access through our self-service buying platform, ClearLine.

AW: How do you help political campaigns achieve precise audience targeting?

EB:  We approach this in two main ways: audience and genre/content reach. For audience reach, we're integrated with major data management platforms like LiveRamp, Experian, and TransUnion. We can layer anonymized identifiers into the supply directly for  private marketplace deals or managed service buys.

We partner with multiple data providers to give our customers optionality. Different matching methodologies can add scale to campaigns, so having access to various providers can be advantageous.

For content reach, our deep integration with publishers gives us a clear picture of the content around which inventory is being monetized. We can create deals around politically relevant genres like sports, news events (e.g., party conventions), or language-specific content like Spanish-language programming.

We can get quite granular, even down to specific channels or networks, while respecting any carriage rights agreements. This level of transparency and insight allows us to slice and dice the world of inventory however campaigns need, ensuring they're not leaving valuable impressions on the table.

AW: What innovations are you seeing in streaming technologies that will impact political advertising?

EB: A key innovation is leveraging technologies that go directly to the source of inventory, like our ClearLine product. This provides buyers with a transparent understanding of available inventory and the shortest path to it.

Another trend is the role of curators in the space, similar to retail media networks. These entities can quickly activate campaigns against frequently updated data, which is crucial for political campaigns needing to respond rapidly to messaging, polling, and world events.

Lastly, powerful supply partners building products for publishers to fully monetize their inventory will be increasingly important. The publisher needs to exist for advertising placement, so selecting partners providing full-service technology solutions for supply is crucial.

AW: What are some of the biggest changes you anticipate in political advertising over the next five years, especially in streaming?

EB: First, how streaming inventory is accessed will evolve. Products like ClearLine, which provides direct access to publisher inventory through the ad server, represent the future. They offer fast, responsive control and a better understanding of pricing and the ecosystem.

Second, as viewership continues to shift towards streaming, investment will follow. Currently, half of every dollar in this election cycle still goes to broadcast TV, despite viewership not justifying that level of investment.

Finally, I'm curious to see how live events will evolve. There are still moments in TV viewing where people want to come together and consume media in a live environment. Political dollars will likely follow the technology providers helping publishers transition these experiences seamlessly to the streaming world.