All politics is local and most national advertisers could learn something by studying recent presidential television advertising campaigns. Let's face it: are there any brands more "national" than presidential candidates?
Campaigns know who we are, where we live and study our behavior intently. They use digital media to leverage behavioral targeting but they are expert at geo-targeting as well. As CNN (and others) demonstrate through state of the art graphics, swing states are won/lost in swing districts, swing zip codes, etc. Districts and zip codes can be closely matched to sub-DMA cable systems. If we sorted swing districs/zips by how closely the candidates are in the polls then ranked them by spending on a CPM it would all become clear. They know how local national really is.
Many national brands have an equivalent geographical skew. They know this and act according to the television industry's legacy thinking. They buy spot television. They may even be aware that they can further segment but here is where I think the industry lets them down. How should it be executed and what is the price/value relationship v. spot and network alternatives? The media themselves can better solve execution. At last sighting I think the 4As was still debating a unified currency. If it takes much longer smart clients will create their own, use third parties and we won't need a single syndicated source.
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