With the arrival of new video distribution methods and social media platforms, we were likely to see various forms of political ads and Live broadcasting of Candidates on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
As we all know, traditional television ads have always remained a foundation for any advertising campaign. But voters should be alerted that every type of digital screen will host political apples soon.
Introduction to Political Advertising
Research by the election commission found voters were likely engaging with the humorous campaigns regardless of trustworthiness and without proper identification as a part of the election battle.
Political advertising has many options to enable political campaigns in the digital world. Choosing the best political advertising medium largely depends on strategic objectives, audience targeting, and budget matters.
Print ads, Radio ads, Television advertising, digital ads, and direct mailing are the most common ways a political candidate communicates through political campaigns. As 2020 is exceptional for the election year, it’s a prediction that expenditure on political ads will rise to 150% compared to the last election campaigns on social media.
The Impact of the Internet on Political Campaigns
The expansion of cable T.V. networks and the advanced technologies of the Internet allow candidates to reach a large audience and communicate their political campaigns directly.
Unlike traditional campaigns, social media innovations have streamlined the process and offered more options to reach a broad audience with a little effort.
Political advertising is reaching a massive volume of constituents through political campaigns on the Internet. Nowadays, political parties mainly associate the Internet and social media with broadcasting their political campaigns.
Google Political Ads
Google decided to make the political campaign information public in the 2020 elections. Google will reveal who will buy the ads and how much money they spend on political campaigns.
To bring more Transparency to online campaigns, google launched India-specific political advertising campaigns, transparency reports, and searchable ad libraries. Google is taking an initiating step toward the 2020 election campaign’s openness on online advertising, enabling voters to get the election-related information they need.
Now, Google has updated its election campaign policy in India. It now required election ads running by advertisers to provide a pre-certificate issued by the Election Commissioner of India. Later, Google will verify advertisers’ identities before running their campaigns on the platform. The Verification process will start in a few days.
Facebook political ads
Facebook’s new ad transparency tool considers users’ ability to use political ads. The new political ad tools offered to pay users can be easily manipulated.
Facebook has put a policy on Facebook Advertising, not only candidate-based ads. It also focused on a legislative issue where the public has given importance to where ads are being run.
Facebook has not even blocked any account, posts, or videos. It is requesting more authorization for those running political ads on its platform. Facebook proposes providing legal documents like a passport, driver’s license, or mailing address to send a verification code.
If you or your party run political campaigns on the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook, it may be a great chance to win. If it is traditional Facebook advertising for a business or to boost your posts, you should give social network and credit card details.
To create new paid advertising for political campaigns, Facebook allows us to work on money through the new validation process.
The New Facebook validation process for political ad campaigns includes three steps.
- Confirmation of Identity
- Wait for the latter in the mail
- Two Factor Authentication
LinkedIn Political Ads
LinkedIn is a unique tool or network to see like-minded professionals. LinkedIn impresses the audience with personalization, Scalability, and acceptance of multiple objectives.
LinkedIn is launching LinkedIn dynamic ads soon in the campaign manager self-service option. With the changes in LinkedIn ads, all advertisers can directly introduce their political ads on the campaign manager self-service option.
This option is available on desktop websites and directly reaches the effective ads option to set up. For the first time, advertisers can monitor and analyze the performance of the ads on Campaign Manager.
LinkedIn consists of more educated voters to draw their attention toward casting their votes. 79% of LinkedIn voters intend to cast a ballot by watching political campaigns on social media.
Twitter Political Ads
Twitter labeled new political ad policies earlier in the 2018 election in India. Twitter is letting news outlets apply exemptions to its political ads as a part of the latest updates on social media platforms.
Twitter plans to implement new standards for political ads, including archiving political ads to enhance ad transparency.
Other steps include labeling the promoted ads or the tweets that contain political content. Finally, the accounts should go through a certification process, which is running the political ad campaigns on their mind.
Twitter has given a chance to the new publisher’s exemption from the new policies to reach their criteria, having more than 200,000 monthly unique users for the site.
Types of Political Ad Campaigns
These political ads will stream, broadcast, and be Instagrammed on social media presence and for the coming years.
Targeted T.V. ads
Initially, targeted television political ads encouraged politicians to squeeze more efficiency from marketing budgets during time-crunched political campaigns. However, the political ads budget has dropped due to more efficient social media campaigns.
Political advertisers say that TV ads help target voters using specific programs that are cheaper than targeting individual users through traditional marketing.
Targeted T.V. political ads are temporary and are highly competitive enough. It has some technical limitations through targeted T.V. ads. Political marketers should focus more on creating targeted T.V. ads.
Social Media Ads
Digital media campaigns and social media ads are exploding in all directions on the Internet. So, the election commission has decided to bring Transparency over political advertising on social media sites.
The election commission believes that Transparency is the only solution to make politicians’ campaigners honest in their political advertising. It helps the voters to argue and find the right one among social media ads.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are the best for political advertising, which follows the new election commission policies.
Positive Ads
Positive ads are the most general type of political campaign comprising video content. These ads involve the candidate talking about the current issues with the background representing the icon of their native place.
Positive ads bring brand authentication to the candidates with the related background to get support from the community voters. These campaigns generate donations and allow eligible citizens to cast their votes throughout the campaign cycle.
Negative Ads
Negative ads are the most natural type of ads to display the footage from newspapers, online news, or their competitors negatively in political campaigns. It will destroy your competitors’ reputations and enhance the candidate’s sentiment.
These ads do not contain a call to action like “Don’t cast For for some X.” For negative ads to resonate with your campaigns, a simple message and reason. Negative ads generally use red or black as a background to dispatch the opposition candidate.
Citizen Testimonials
Citizen testimonials are the best way to impress the voters fighting for a cause. If an average citizen sits beside the candidates or an activity done by the candidate dates with an ordinary citizen, these ads reach more audiences.
Citizen testimonials are all about how the candidate cares about public safety and how the candidate deals with healthcare issues and national security.
Facebook Ad Transparency Tools
The decision to launch the Facebook Ad Transparency tool, especially for political campaigns in India, will be in the fourth market after the U.S., U.K., U.K., and Brazil.
What does it provide in terms of Transparency? It has already started in the U.S…….. and gives the information to users, the buyers of that particular political ad. It also tells you how much you paid for those specific ads. It also catches the misinformation provided by third parties.
This feature will flag the political ads that are misleading, violent, or projecting any lousy information. Moreover, it filters the ads by country. Facebook is restricting the third-party tools political advertisers use to target and maintain the library for online searchable Ads where all the relevant ads of a particular political advertiser are shown along with demographics and impressions of that ad.
Twitter Ad Transparency Tools
Twitter Ad Transparency Tool allows users to see the buyer of a political ad campaign in the Tweet feed. It also includes billing information, impressions, demographics, and ad spending.
It is named ‘Ads Transparency Center,’ enabling global Twitter users to find the political advertiser.
The added extension is that they provide information about what factors the political advertisers are using to target the demographics — the additional information of badge showing that the ad as a political will be displayed.
Everyone can access the Ads Transparency Center without having a Twitter account or login details. It gives the people a strong vision of the buyer of the political ad campaigns on Twitter.
Users can search using a particular handle to see the ads from a specific advertiser. It helps to find the creator of political ad campaigns within a week. When the account is suspended, then tweets won’t be displayed.
Google Ads Transparency Tools
Google introduced the India Political Advertising Report, already running in the United States. It allows Google users to see the reports of political ads through searches. That enables the users to get information about who is buying political ads on Google’s platform. How much are political advertisers spending to launch political ads on Google?
It includes the location-wise amount spent on political ads. From highest to lowest paid advertisers list displayed. The political advertisers promoting their political ads should then submit their government-approved I.D.
Most advertisers choose the keyword that displays their ad to the user searching for that keyword. Hence, political advertisers should spend more.
Google discloses who paid for the political ad. Google will use the information given during verification to provide the exposure as ‘paid for by.’
Best Practices for Online Political Advertising
Using the Media
According to the user’s preference, place your political ads. Along with the T.V. ads, choose the web to run the different formats of the political ad campaigns. Many social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are available to launch political ad campaigns at an affordable cost.
When used realistically, the Internet is the treasure to fund the election campaign. Review the terms and conditions before promoting your political ad, as some online advertisers will not mention canceling the contract.
Approaching online voters
The public is messed up with the flood of political messages. Share information about the people facing the problems and how they can be solved. This makes people talk about politics between friends, colleagues, and families.
Online Display Advertising
Reach the most experienced and established individuals, publishers, and organizations so that there may be more chances to overcome the complexity of online political advertising and can quickly impact the online users to vote.
Use the components online media components to disclose all types of ad campaigns through text format, audio, and video formats that reach each online user. Try to find the metrics to launch effective political ad campaigns.
Searching Engine Marketing
Advertising on a search engine like Google will help to expand your political ad campaign to millions of online users. The keyword plays a vital role in the search engine. However, picking the opponent’s keyword is unsuitable for finding better results. Advertising on the keyword of their own candidate’s name is the suggested one.
Choosing the local advertisers
Finding local advertisers will help boost the election campaign as they might know which type of political ad campaigns are most preferred by online users.
Response in Real-Time
Suppose the public posts a message on your Twitter profile stating a particular issue. Then, respond to them immediately to solve the problem. It charges no cost to get the attention of the public.
Top Political Ad Campaigns with Examples
Bill Clinton’ Man from Hope’
It is the biographical video ads that most compel the public. It shows how Clinton’s journey started from a small-town root that presents the candidate’s’s’s’s’s’s’s’s wisdom, work principles, and sense of humanity. Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush with electoral votes of 69 percent.
Yes, We Can Barack Obama Music Video
This video has gone viral as the music was added to Obama’s New Hampshire primary concession speech. Over 30 celebrity artists are singing his words. It helped to gain online fundraising. Obama defeated John McCain with 68% electoral votes.
Historical Campaign Ad – Windsurfing(Bush-Cheney 04)
It was one of the most effective ads in 2004. George W. Bush stated that John Kerry was a flip-flopper of the political wind. George W. Bush won 53% of the electoral vote.
Amazing Election Campaign Advertisement
This campaign will generate the message of electing the right person to gain the freedom to live.
Conclusion
As 2020 is an election year, all social media platforms are set to raise revenue. Experts believe that expenditure on political ads through social media will increase up to 150% compared to previous years. Make sure to introduce social media for political ads in your candidates’ political campaigns with the help of this ultimate guide.