One of the reasons spot cable has done much better this political season is the refinement and effective selling of cable’s ability to target by zones.
NCC, the spot cable rep firm co-owned by Comcast Cable Communications, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications, put together a slick brochure entitled “Essential Guide to Spot Cable for Political Advertising.”
“What has been important to our success is the new research and positioning elements that NCC deploys—particularly our SMART Buys—which were embraced heavily by the campaigns,” said Andrew Capone, NCC’s senior VP of marketing and business development.
For Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, NCC prepared detailed media plans that included inserting spots in up to 19 cable networks that targeted the various constituencies the Obama campaign wants to reach. In fact, the Obama campaign was the biggest spender on spot cable in Iowa and New Hampshire, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Using data from Nielsen Market Breaks (both National and Local People Meter data) and MRI, NCC’s SMART buy can be targeted to viewers based on a host of characteristics: political party affiliation, age of voter, size of county, children in household by age, income, race, home ownership, Internet access, occupation (white-collar, blue-collar or working women), education level attained, household size and political outlook (very liberal, somewhat liberal, etc.)
SMART also allows campaigns to ask for targeting based on lifestyle and product usage characteristics using data from MRI, Scarborough or Prizm clusters.
One of cable’s biggest areas of opportunity, Mr. Capone notes, is video-on-demand. “‘Elections ’08 on Demand,’ our new cross-MSO initiative that delivers relevant politically themed content and provides opportunities for VOD long-form political messaging, is now being rolled out nationally,” Mr. Capone said.