The 2008 Tools Campaign: Buy Cable Smart

One of the first major recommendations to come from the New Politics Institute was a simple one – Buy Cable. In 2005 our research showed that the political and advocacy worlds were significantly behind the private sector in adopting this important new tool in an area where most of the money in politics goes – television advertising.

One estimate from PQM Media estimated that in 2004 the commercial advertising world put 4 dollars of advertising dollars on cable for every 5 for traditional broadcast television. This study found the ratio in politics to be 1 dollar on cable for every 18 on broadcast. (check). Given the billions spent in politics every two years on television advertising, this was clearly a problem that needed addressing.

Our research showed that the reason why the commercial world had shifted tens of billions of advertising dollars to cable was simple – more people today watch cable than broadcast, and it offers much more precise demographic and geographic targeting than traditional broadcast television. The latter is particularly important for politics, since geographic targets do not fit neatly into the more than 200 media markets across the country.

So we aggressively advocated to progressives that they should learn more about and experiment with buying more cable as part of any paid media campaign. There was no one cookie cutter solution, and certainly cable is not as easy to buy as we want it to be, but much more consideration needed to be given to this potentially valuable new tool.

We are pleased that many did take our recommendations and shifted some of their advertising to cable. The same study cited earlier found that the broadcast-cable ad spend ratio in politics went from 18:1 in 2004 to 10:1 in 2006. We know from anecdotal evidence that many groups acted upon our advice and changed their advertising strategies. In some cases the changes impacted millions of dollars of advertising, ensuring a much greater return on the valuable dollars invested in reaching the target audience.

But in this process we learned a lot about not only how to buy cable, but how to buy it smart. That’s what this paper, “Buy Cable Smart, A Checklist” is about.

Finally, there is another reason why it is critical progressives learn how to buy cable now. Television, the preeminent medium of politics, is going through a dramatic transformation. It has been altered significantly by the rise of cable and satellite over the past 20 years. But now it is being radically altered by the movement of video to the internet and mobile phones and the rise of digital video recording devices. The way we move video to people, long dominated by our 20th century broadcast distribution system, is giving way to something much more 21st century in its construct, where traditional broadcast will be just one of many options of how to get video messages to people.

What this means for those of us in politics and advocacy is that as television and video change, we must become used to a period of intense, constant experimentation. Doing things as one did them 2, 5, 10 years ago is not an option. Think about this – in 1986, 90 percent of people watching television were watching live broadcast television. In 2008 it will be about 30 percent. This year, right now, there are tests underway that will allow us to deliver a television ad directly to someone’s set-top box, meaning that one would be able to target video messages to a household, or even person, as we do direct mail, phones and door-to-door campaigns today. Depending on the adoption rate, this one-to-one use of television could actually become an important part of the media environment in this election, but certainly it will be essential no later than 2010.

So buying cable smart is not just about buying cable. It is the first step in learning how to adapt our politics to a new whole new era of political communications no longer dominated by broadcast television.