Can Marketers Apply Obama's TV-Data Play?

Targeted television advertising ostensibly helped President Barack Obama solidify his re-election. But can it provide the same efficiency for consumer marketers?

The industry is slowly adopting set-top box and third-party data to make TV buys based on criteria other than Nielsen demographics. But President Obama's successful use of "the optimizer," and an unorthodox decision to choose airtime only by time of day and channel, could advance the strategy. His camp matched its extensive voter data with data purchased from Rentrak and FourthWall to determine what potential voters were watching. This allowed the campaign to buy advertising based on model voters as opposed to traditional age- and gender-based ratings, said Carol Davidsen, director of integration and media targeting for the Obama campaign. As a result, the campaign bought networks and time slots it might not have previously considered, including daytime and overnight, and national buys on TV Land and Syfy. Traditionally, political campaigns make buys based on content relevancy, with a huge dependence on news programs. This model worked so well for President Obama, who was trying to target specific voter groups to tip the margins in his favor, it's expected to become the norm for major elections, Davidsen said. But it might not be the most-effective strategy for some consumer marketers.