One OTT Thing for Next Election Cycle - Outvote Is Now Impactive

We’ve heard some strong reactions from the progressive tech space this week to the news that Tech co plans to continue both buying and hiring in the political space — apparently minus the partisanship, bringing a long-standing debate back into the tech spotlight.

Low-hanging fruit here, but this is obviously the winning blind quote from the Protocol piece: “My understanding is it's definitely non-partisan, but it's Bloomberg-y, so, pretty progressive.”

We interviewed Amanda Malo, president of BASK Digital, this week to get her take on what needs to happen in the OTT space for campaigns to better utilize that outreach channel. First thing: Malo is extremely bullish on OTT in the campaign space and her expectation for the ’22 cycle is exponential growth.

During our conversation she laid out three things advertisers would like to see from platforms ahead of the midterm cycle: additional targeting options, greater transparency, and more speed. You can watch the interview here.

One interesting part of our conversation with Malo that didn’t make it into this week’s video: Where do OTT campaigns sit? Are they the domain of the TV buyers as part of the overall media strategy or are they firmly in the digital bucket?

Currently, according to Malo, the lean is in the direction of the traditional buyers for one simple reason: the major providers in the space (especially the network providers) are pitching the traditional TV buyers because that’s their natural sales funnel. But…

“Digital buyers tend to understand the tech and the caveats of the tech better than the traditional buyers do just because we’ve been playing whack-a-mole with ad fraud for 10 years now. So digital buyers are probably better at vetting and asking more detailed questions.”

Malo said there’s value to be had on both sides given the deep experience of TV buyers, but the future of OTT should lean in the direction of digital buyers and digital firms who have a comprehensive understanding of that ecosystem.

Outvote, the friend-to-friend organizing and P2P texting platform backed by Higher Ground Labs, rebranded as Impactive this week. Part of the reason, according to founder Naseem Makiya, was to broaden their appeal beyond campaigns. He told C&E:

“We’re going to continue to do the same work we’ve been doing around elections and politics, we’re in no way stepping out of that, it really is just an expansion.”

One area Makiya believes the company can grow is through white labeling their product for organizations or campaigns. For instance, the 2020 Biden campaign app and Planned Parenthood’s app are both based on the company’s platform.

“The more we learned about the space and understood it, the more we realized it was just more impactive to really let our clients do that growth, and they have those big brands — When We All Vote, Planned Parenthood — that can bring in the volunteers and activists and we just need to be building what they need.”

Worth your time: Michael Beach’s interview with Professor Karen Nelson-Field of Amplified Intelligence on the future of media measurement (skip to 5:29 if you want to avoid the “how’d you get your start” stuff). Key takeaways:

The Advertising Environment:

People talk about the attention economy, but for advertisers it’s really about measuring inattention, its causes and its costs.

Advertisers need to think about “ethical solutions to inattention.” That means recognizing that there’s been a backlash against how user data has been utilized. “Advertising is difficult enough when viewers want to block you, so how can we actually improve the system and move toward a currency which is quality-based? That’s what’s missing in the market today.”

Measuring Media:

The problem Nelson-Field aims to solve: There’s really no way for advertisers to tell the relative value between platform A and platform B. That’s where attention data comes in.

“CPM and performance is not linear. For example, two similar socials might have very similar CPMs on the surface but below the surface their attention numbers are quite different. So we can’t just jump on a measure that we “know CPMs don’t equate to value.”

Nelson-Fields thinks reach and frequency will stick around for the time being as primary measures, but “attention will become a supplementary layer.”

“Attention data that’s credibly collected should be used as a weighting layer against net reach” to produce an Attention-Adjusted Net Reach measure, which will enable advertisers to meaningfully compare platforms and measure relative performance.

Applied at a market level that will have a dramatic impact on CPM pricing in favor of the advertiser.

There’s a lot more to chew over. Watch the full interview here.

Washington AG Sues Google Again for Alleged Violations of Political Ad Transparency Law
(Seattle Times)

The lawsuit claims Google is selling political ads without retaining the disclaimer information required by state law.

Cord Cutting In 2020: Pay TV Industry Lost 5.5 Million Subscribers
(Protocol)

The pandemic resulted in additional cord cutting last year and the trend should continue to accelerate in 2021.

Lessons In Vetting: Don’t Just Google Your Candidate
(Campaigns & Elections)

Called “vulnerability reports” in the campaign world, vetting your candidate just as vigorously as you vet your opposition lets you know what fights are coming before they even arise.