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How Programmatic Advertising Can Help Win General Elections 2019

how-programmatic-advertising-can-help-win-general-elections-2019
The Indian society is quite diverse, large, and dynamic. Thus, the Indian voters are a mix of people falling into different age brackets and different demographics. They also come from different minorities, and casts. There are differences with respect to their political affinities, belief systems and religious preferences, not to mention the great Urban-Rural divide. Winning the hearts of such a diverse voter base of 813.25 million is not an easy task. It calls for a strong strategy based on solid data points. Well, all hope is not lost. Though there are such great differences, the Indian voter base also shares a few similar traits.

With Digital India going strong, a large digital footprint is left behind. Let’s see what the figures say. Approximately 500 million Indians currently have access to the internet. The story does not end here. The smartphone penetration in the country is ever-increasing and Statista estimates that it will be around 39% in 2019. There are multiple factors that have led to this progress. These factors include the plummeting handset prices and affordable high-speed internet connections. It is quite natural for Indians to spend more and more time on digital media, and that is what they are doing. Indians are spending more than 50% of their total smartphone time in activities like browsing, social networking, video streaming, chatting, and on photo apps, as per data from Neilsen. Indians are using social media quite profusely. According to Statista, India ranks first with respect to the number of Facebook users, which stands at 300 million for India. WhatsApp follows suit with around 200 million Indians users.

Today, voters are using numerous digital devices like mobiles, tablets, laptops, and internet connected TVs to access the internet and surf the web. Thus, it is necessary to reach them everywhere on all devices. Programmatic advertising offers the perfect solution for this – omnichannel advertising. These digital screens can be turned into a powerful tool to reach out to these voters while they are browsing the web.

Further, the unique programmatic capabilities like precise targeting and granular reporting make it an ideal solution for reaching out to the voters of a specific regions. Targeting techniques like geo-targeting can be used to target even the far-flung regions of the country. Through programmatic advertising, parties can have targeting strategies based on political ideals, party affiliation, location, age, gender, ownership, financial status, business, education, language and so on.

Data being an integral part of programmatic advertising, parties can leverage this crucial asset to the fullest for building data-driven and effective campaigns that allow them to gain a better understanding of the problems faced by voters. This data enables them to provide the right solutions to the right problems and formulate their campaign strategies and communication around the same. Data Management Platforms (DMPs) play a vital role in this, thanks to their capabilities of analyzing and processing voter data and advanced data crunching techniques.

With programmatic advertising, parties can tap into the relevant voter banks, increasing the chances of winning. It also reduces the number of wasted ad impressions, bringing down the inefficiencies and channelizing the budgets in a better way. These resources can then utilized for even better and high-quality ad placements. Programmatic advertising also provides granular reports that allow advertisers to analyze the performance and optimize it further to drive better results. Programmatic technique of Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) allows parties to deliver extremely personalized messages, crafted individually for each voter based on his/her real-time preferences.

But one needs to be cautious of certain problems like transparency, ad frauds and brand-safety. If not addressed properly, these can play havoc with campaign budgets and negatively affect the campaign performance. But selecting the right platform is the way ahead. A platform that has the right mechanisms like ad fraud detection and protection partners and brand-safety mechanisms is the right choice.