Inside political marketers’ strategies to get Democrats elected

CHICAGO, IL. — On day three of the Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton declared in his speech that “Democrats right now have a lot of hay in the barn…massive achievements, massive advances.” He was one of the high-profile leaders — from Oprah to the Obamas — to take the stage this week to support Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. Behind the scenes of the convention, an army of campaign operatives stood ready to turn all that momentum — that hay — into media campaigns for the main stretch of election season.

Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket has injected new energy into the party, evident across conversations at every happy hour event here in Chicago. Still, with U.S. Election day two and a half months away, many across the party want to keep that momentum going, knowing 70% of advertising spend is projected to activate between Labor Day and Election Day, according to AdImpact.

The Current spoke with Democratic operatives on the ground who specialize in running media campaigns — from fundraising to planning to measurement — for an inside view of the 2024 political advertising playbook. The key strategies speak to the importance of streaming platforms, with Harris’ campaign putting more money into digital advertising than the Trump campaign; reaching beyond voter files to target potentially swayable audiences; and using the real-time capabilities of digital advertising to change campaign strategies when needed.

“What we've seen in some of the data is there are a great group of people that are up for grabs,” Bob Brennan, vice president of political and advocacy partnerships at consumer data and intelligence company Resonate, tells The Current.

Resonate correctly predicted the outcomes of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, with Brennan noting there’s been a big uptick in excitement for Harris.

“That anti-MAGA majority that we crafted were people that either voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020 but didn't want Biden to run again. For example, in Pennsylvania, Biden was only consolidating around 65% of the vote and he wasn’t going to be able to win. Those people care about a lot of issues [and] Kamala Harris is so well positioned to go out and get them,” Brennan says.

Finding those potential voters in the seemingly partisan world is not an easy task to take on, but Democratic leaders think it is possible. A recent poll from FiveThirtyEight found Harris is polling at 5% higher than Biden overall since he dropped out and 9% higher among Independents.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Harris’ campaign has reserved $370 million in advertising that will start after Labor Day, including $200 million in digital spend. Harris’ team believes this is the largest digital ad reservation ever in American politics.

“It's very exciting and it really does reflect a change in consumption,” Alec Eskind, senior digital strategist at political agency AL Media Strategy, tells The Current. The firm has worked on ads for Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “We’ve seen such a shift, and it’s been dramatic. I think political consultants are finally moving away from broadcast and cable and toward digital. You can use your resources more efficiently and I think you're reaching more and different kinds of people.”

Eskind says while most of the advertising spend is activated in the final two months of election season, the secret to success is the work in the final weeks of summer to prepare for when media plans launch. Political advertising has been historically slower to adopt the monumental shifts from traditional TV to streaming, with traditional TV projected to make up 57% of total political spend in 2024, according to Emarketer. U.S. political streaming ad spend is projected to climb a staggering 600% from 2020 to 2024, to $1.56 billion.

That’s a sea change, according to Harris’ campaign manager Quentin Fulks. The 46% of spend going into traditional television in this blitz for the Harris campaign, according to The New York Times, is far different from the nearly 80% on TV that Biden initially reserved in 2020.

“This is a modern campaign in 2024, and we’re not just stuck in the times of old, where 80% of the budget has to be on television,” Fulks, told The New York Times.

Moving toward streaming can give the ability for political marketers to frequency cap audiences and broaden the types of people they’re reaching, which Eskind says is not possible through traditional TV. In fact, 31% of swing voters are only reachable through streaming, double the number of people only available through linear TV, according to Cross Screen Media.

Moving past the voter file

Two tactics that Eskind pointed to as exciting are automatic content recognition (ACR) conquesting and ZIP code targeting. A|L Media Strategy uses ACR data to see what audiences have seen Republican ads. It then applies those segments to run ads against them so that those audiences see Democratic ads, exposing the exact people that Republicans are talking to. Conquesting has existed outside of the political space, as brands in verticals like CPG have used it to advertise against audiences their rivals are also activating on.

With ZIP code targeting, agencies can move beyond voter file match lists, which historically have been the primary identifier of voters. Segments like highest density of older people or younger people can be created to more precisely target new sets of potential voters. Eskind and Liz Bennett, partner at Democratic agency Middle Seat, both say match rates for voter files are declining as more political restrictions have been put in following the 2016 election season.

To combat that, Eskind says, “expanding the targeting out and being more inclusive is really important and something that we're doing.”

“You have to increase the match rate by going and thinking about this person in different ways,”Bennett tells The Current. “Targeting them in different ways, whether that’s by behavior or platform. You can overcome that you’ve only matched something like 20% of your list. What does that other 80% look like and how do you find that other portion?”

Harris brings in record fundraising

Agencies like Middle Seat and MissionWired, which place a big focus on raising money, map audience segments for potential donors past voter files as well. Reuters recently reported that the Harris campaign has raised around $500 million in the month since she became the presumptive candidate, a number that Reuters reports is an “unprecedented money haul.”

Nat Binns and Ambika Subramanyam, partner and president of agency at Mission Wired, respectively, both say they’ve never seen so many first-time donors, coming from everywhere. These donors also donate down the ballot to races across the country.

While there’s a spotlight on candidates’ personal fundraising power, their campaigns aren’t the only ones placing media buys. Harris’ nomination has ignited special interest groups in her orbit like Planned Parenthood and pro-choice PAC Emilys List, according to sources.

Those groups’ fundraising dollars are turned into advertising that targets undecided voters in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Political firms, which have to use all of their campaign donations by the end of the election, are constantly balancing the uncertainty of budgets with the need to leverage real-time opportunities. This means it’s essential to stay agile and understand when to pivot and how to connect with audiences as efficiently as possible, according to Eskind.

Total U.S. political ad spending is estimated to reach a record $12.32 billion this year. And much of that will be deployed in a test-and-learn fashion, with a heavy emphasis on finding voters who aren’t enamored with either candidate. Digital measurement tools help operatives understand which messages are resonating with that critical audience, and creative as well as media plans shift accordingly.

“We’re always trying to understand where the persuadable audience is,” Eskind says. “There's been a lot of talk about people that were not excited to vote for either candidate, so understanding not only how to communicate with them but also where to communicate with them is a challenge. And making sure that we’re using our resources wisely.”