3 things that stink about the House GOP Obamacare ad buy (and why it’s still smart).
Roll Call reported on Friday that the American Action Network is dropping $1.4 million in advertising support for the House GOP leadership’s move to “Repeal and [who the fuck knows]” Obamacare. As these things go, it’s pretty typical of early to mid-cycle advertising by pressure groups: There’s a lot of sound and fury, but it’s really more of a plan to grab headlines and mollify/threaten legislators than actually persuade enough voters to move actual poll numbers.
When it comes down to it, there’s 3 big questions raised by the press reports but Democrats should learn from the overall strategy — and respond (better).
Stinky thing #1: It’s not actually a big ad buy
So, $1.4 million sounds like a lot of money, but this ad buy includes $1 million in TV across 15 districts, and $400,000 for online video, search, and display across 28 districts. It’s unclear what the overlap between the TV and digital districts are, but presumably it’s a fair number — and that would be smart. Layering digital ads on top of television ads is proven to boost advertising recall more than either TV or digital can do alone (consequently, despite what a lot of other political consultants who work in digital will tell you, don’t plan on abandoning TV advertising at any point in the foreseeable future).
In any case, while the GOP deserves a high-five for continuing to include digital as a strong part of their standard media mix (almost 30% of the total buy is digital, something we have yet to see regularly on the Democratic side), $400,000 in digital buys spread over two weeks in 28 districts is only $15,000 per district. That’s not exactly burning down the house. GEICO, for example, spent nearly $345,000 in just digital video DAILY in the third quarter of 2016, according to ad tracking firm Pathmatics. And they’re only the 4th biggest digital advertiser over that time period. For the sake of argument, if you assume that all congressional districts have the same number of people, 28 districts is 6.4% of the nation. To match GEICO’s digital video spend, they’d have to spend $22,080 DAILY, and that doesn’t even include search or banner ads.
Stinky thing #2: It’s too cost-inefficient to move poll numbers.
The scale above is one thing, but the efficiency of the buy is pretty bad too. First off, they’re largely targeting their leaders and committee chairs’ districts. Those, presumably are reasonably safe districts. They do explicitly mention that the buy includes some vulnerable incumbents, but if they were smart, ALL of this buy would go to protecting vulnerable incumbents and in vulnerable Democratic seats.
Second, the COST of this buy is quite high. Roll Call says they expect to get 8.1 million views of the advertisements, and they don’t really specify whether that’s just TV or TV and digital. At worst (if that number includes the TV ads) the buy will cost them $172.84 per thousand views of their ads (or, roughly 17.3 cents every time one person sees an ad).
In digital advertising, we call it a “$172.84 CPM” which is “cost-per-mille” instead of “cost-per-thousand” because everything sounds better in French. And if you think that’s weird, ask someone to explain GRPs, which is what TV advertising is “measured” in — but that’s a discussion for another day.
But I digress.
It’s likely that those 8.1 million views may just be their expected number of digital impressions, which still ends up being a very high CPM of $49.38. Digital video CPMs frequently will be in that neighborhood if they’re highly targeted to persuadable voters and of good quality inventory — but display (banner) ads and search should be MUCH less expensive, which would pull that average down significantly… so this smells to me like a pretty inefficient buy.
In any case, combining the high-cost per actual person who will see these ads, and the fact that the buy is concentrated in already Republican areas, I wouldn’t bet heavily that you’re going to see any movement in the numbers of Republicans who think the House GOP will succeed at fixing Obamacare. There’s just not going to be a large number of persuadable folks who’ll even have the opportunity to see these ads.
Stinky thing #3: It sets the GOP up for failure
Leaving aside the technical aspects of the buy here, on the messaging front, they’re telling Americans that they can deliver a unicorn — something better, cheaper, and more flexible than the Affordable Care Act. Then again, I’m just an unfrozen caveman lawyer/digital ad guy… not a health care economist. Maybe they can deliver, but I’m going to guess not.
However, while we know that voters view the economy through a partisan lens, people know what their health care premiums are, if they get dropped from their plans, and whether or not their insurance is better or worse. Being a Republican may make you guess the unemployment rate nationwide is significantly higher than it is, but you’re definitely going to know for sure whether YOU have a job.
So, they are seriously over-promising here — and that will come back to bite them down the road if they don’t deliver (and Democrats don’t miss the opportunity to make them pay for their mistakes).
Early “branding” advertising for 2018 is smart
Despite all of the above, I still think this is a smart move by the GOP, if a poorly executed one, and Democrats (and their allied PACs and issue groups) would be wise to respond (better, and bigger) both online and on television.
Most candidates will have limited advertising dollars, and will need to hold it until 2018 — quite possible late in 2018. And, by then, whatever will happen with the Affordable Care Act will have been done. But if we cede the ground (or the screens and airwaves) to the GOP now, the perception that the GOP “fixed” Obamacare will have been cemented in the minds of the vast majority of Americans who get their health insurance from their employers and won’t necessarily see significant chances in their policies or coverages.
We need to reach these persuadable individuals (ideally voters who could be convinced to vote Democrats, but there’s some utility in speaking to soft Republicans who can be swayed) early to cement their attitudes on health care reform-reform (see what I did there?) before the election season really heats up. Democrats are going to need to talk to voters about these fundamental issues early, and frequently, in the states and districts we’ll need in November 2018 and 2020.
Individual campaigns can’t be expected to do it — but PACs and interest groups need to keep the conversation going with these voters if we are to have any hope of either derailing the dismantling of Obamacare, or — failing that — winning back as many seats as possible down the road.
And, if we DO have the will and the wherewithal to spend real money to talk to these voters, I know that those of us on the Democratic side of the aisle will do a better job of targeting our TV and digital ad spends than our Republican friends.
I’d love to you hear your thoughts. You can find me tweeting about advertising, online politics, whisky, and cephalopods at @SteveOlson — and if you liked this post, I’d appreciate you clicking the “recommend” button below. Thanks!
