By Kristen Fisher (Director of Business Development)
Every cycle since the dawn of time, when it comes to media spend, has been focused on which channel gets what percentage of the budget. Recently, almost every conversation I’ve been having has been about what needs to happen to drive media mixes so they aren’t so stuck in the past.
Linear TV absolutely still has a role. As we all know, it’s great for broad reach. It gives you the confidence to know that you’re going to hit older, high-propensity voters there. That’s very real, and still very much matters.
But the way people watch TV has changed. So much.
Voters just aren’t sitting down and watching cable the way they used to. They’re on streaming platforms: Hulu, YouTube TV, and Roku, to name a few. They’re constantly connected to screens, and it’s no longer just younger voters. The group of the electorate that is spending a meaningful amount of time there is growing, and it’s not getting smaller.
Which is why the typical approach that most campaigns take feels a bit off.
We still tend to create plans that lock in big linear buys, and then if there’s any budget left, we layer in streaming. When in reality, streaming is doing a lot more of the heavy lifting than we give it credit for.
The most significant difference is how you want to focus on targeting. With linear, you’re buying programming and hoping the right people are watching. With streaming, you can actually focus in on the voters you care about: specific geographies, demographics, modeled audiences, all of it.
That’s a huge deal, especially when you’re trying to be efficient.
I’m not saying scrap linear. It still gives you major scale and helps create that “we’re everywhere” feeling, which every campaign needs. Something to think about is if you’re too heavy there and treating streaming as an afterthought, you’re probably overspending in a few areas and missing voters.
The way we should think about it is simple: linear builds awareness, streaming sharpens it.
You need both, but they shouldn’t be weighted equally just because that’s how we’ve always done it.
Remember, at the end of the day, voters didn’t go anywhere. They just changed how they watch. And the campaigns that adjust to that are the ones that will be in a much better position.
