If you read the article titled “The ‘rug has been pulled out’: Campaigns flop amid Facebook, Google ad bans” in Politico, you may be worried about how your campaign is going to keep a strong ad presence on social media platforms. Don’t worry— hope is not lost! You can still get ads on Facebook, but one degree removed.
The new reality is that social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit have become the portals to access current events and news. Pew Research shared that 55% of American adults get their news from Facebook and other platforms – and that trend is still climbing.
With display ads, you can reach the audiences on these platforms when they click on the links in their social streams, in particular, news links on Facebook. Most news sites earn their revenue with display ads, so when a user clicks on an article on Facebook, they’ll be taken to a news site where they can see your political ad. Plus, we can still precisely target those ads to each voter by matching TargetSmart voter audiences and buying the ads through politically friendly media buying platforms (DSPs) like Roku/DataXu. Take a look at how this works.
Display ads are also often significantly less expensive than Facebook ads, allowing campaigns to increase reach for awareness and name ID efforts. Depending on your audience size and how many others are targeting that same voter segment, Facebook can become a pretty pricey option. Using display ads, your ad can be in front of more eyeballs for the same price as Facebook.
And that’s not the biggest benefit. Those who are reading local news sites are also more likely to be voters. This makes display ads critical, especially for down-ballot campaigns, as smaller news outlets are significantly less expensive to advertise with than nationwide names like the Huffington Post.
You might be concerned about click-through rates and conversions, which is understandable — but the benchmark is transforming now that Facebook and Google may ban political ads forever. Digital politicos know that the rules are always changing and we should all be keeping an eye out for what the commercial advertising world is doing. Opportunities abound and SpeakEasy is always adding new display ad templates that compel voters to click and start their conversion and voting journey.
While Facebook and Google are still steering away from political ads, remember there’s more than one way to reach users. The impressions that you get via display ads embedded in the news are likely to be the most valuable to your campaign’s effort.
SpeakEasy Political is the leading tool for campaigns and organizations to easily create high-impact digital media and direct mail campaigns. By leveraging innovative media strategies and our brand building experience, our tech powers Democratic candidates and causes up and down the ballot. SpeakEasy’s Consultant Studio was also built to support consultant teams with leading data, strategic targeting, and comprehensive ad tech to serve as your backend media buying operation. Ready to get started?
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