Programmatic Digital Strategies for Political Advertisers | Phil Vavelidis

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, media buyers, and business owners. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Phil Vavelidis, Simpli.fi's very own Director of Political. Phil has worked in political digital advertising for the past 10 years. He lives outside of Washington DC in Alexandria, Virginia and is an avid Washington DC sports fan and a former collegiate tennis player. Phil, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Phil Vavelidis: Thank you David. Excited to be here. David McBee: Excited to have you. You are our political guy here at Simpli.fi. So I'm eager to hear how political advertisers can take advantage of the digital landscape. You ready to talk about that? Phil Vavelidis: 100%, yeah. David McBee: All right, perfect. So let's start things off with the very exciting topic of data onboarding. When it comes to political advertising, what are the top things that advertisers should keep an eye on to get the most out of their investments and avoid unnecessary spending? Phil Vavelidis: Yeah, so I mean this is the age long question, right? What's the most effective way to reach my audience? What's the most effective data that I can use? And there's so many different tactics and data sets in the market that it can become quite overwhelming. And if we're being honest, there's also a lot of garbage out there. So it's extremely important, one that you trust the data source where you're getting those audiences from, and two, once you've established that data audience, that you can find a way to maximize the amount of those people or devices that you can target. So oftentimes clients are spending a lot of money on first party lists and the idea that you might purchase an entire list but only be able to match back half of that or less than half, is something that we're helping our clients avoid because you're wasting time and money, especially if you're having to take your list of unmatched users, find another way to try and match them. Our solution through our AGF tool, in my opinion, has absolutely changed the game and set a new standard in the industry because not only are we talking 93%+ match rates, but we're matching these lists in a matter of minutes and getting campaigns live within the same day. And it's extremely important for political folks to find someone that can do that. A lot of other matching partners are taking days if not weeks in some cases, to do exactly that. So when we're looking for a combination of speed and effectiveness, we've certainly proven our success with a lot of clients and I would urge most political advertisers to try and find someone who can do just that. Especially something to keep in mind when you're having to maximize scale in those later months later summer, fall months on the connected TV side where you're going to see limited impressions and extremely competitive CPMs to run against. And I would say in our last cycle in 2022, we had a lot of clients coming to us in the final months because we were one of the only vendors who were able to provide them with a decent amount of avails. And that's really a result of being able to match and target at a far higher percentage of those client lists. David McBee: I love that. The match rate seems very important for somebody who's spending a lot of money on data for sure. With voters spending so much time on all their different devices, they're on their phones, they're on their laptops, they're watching a lot of connected TV, where is the best place for political advertisers to share their ads? Phil Vavelidis: So targeting your audience is the primary focus, right? But I would say as long as you can get your messaging in front of the right audience, you've won half the battle. And so now driving that frequency up with your messaging is really the next step because you want message retention. You want to get your voters passionate and excited to vote for your candidate or cause. And that ultimately is the winning formula. It's obvious that large screen TVs and connected TVs are the easiest ways to be splashy and in your face and drive completion rates, especially because you're typically running on content that your users are focused and engaged with. But you really want to be approaching those users from all different angles. And the answer isn't really dependent on what device you're reaching your audience with. I would say it's more so around how often can you be in front of the right audience at the right time and while they're engaged. So again, when we're running a product like our addressable geofencing tool, we're able to tap into our device graph and identify all the devices within a household so that we're running a CTV campaign. We're also retargeting those users on their tablet or mobile device, whether they're at home or on the go. The more that we can do to up and level out that frequency helps us run those successful campaigns overall. David McBee: Let's talk more about connected TV for a moment. I've got some stats here I want to read. AVODS, that stands for Ad Supported Video on Demand Services and FAST, that's Free Ad Supported Streaming TV Models, they were growing significantly. They were about 1% in 2018 for political advertising. In '22, I think it was 35%. And eMarketer's predicting that it will be 45% of all digital political advertising this year. Is that what you're seeing Phil? Phil Vavelidis: Yeah, so everything that we're hearing, everything we're preparing for is pointing towards CTV reigning supreme again this election cycle. So we're already seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in reservation buys for CTV inventory across the industry. Candidates are locking up as much of those impressions as we're already preparing to be in an absolute dog fight heading into the late summer and fall with bidding for CTV impressions. So I think it's really important to start having those conversations now with political clients and honestly even nonpolitical clients that from the summer through election day, we should be prepared for far higher CTV CPMs. And tying this back to my earlier point, this is also why it's beneficial for us to reach those audiences more effectively or for clients in general to reach those audiences more effectively because it gives us a larger audience to reach, which in turn unlocks the ability to find more impressions, deliver against higher budgets. And so now David, while you mentioned CTV is growing so quickly, one thing we're finding that just doesn't seem to want to go away is broadcast TV, linear TV. Of course, billions and billions of dollars are still going to be run on linear. So for the sake of being as effective as possible, we're doing some new things that we started out in 2022 like offering layering on our linear household exclusion lists. For some clients that's not as important and we won't even worry about it in those cases. But for others who don't want to double up on both linear and CTV, we can run that linear exclusion list to make sure that they're only hitting that quote cutter audience and not doubling down on impressions or price. David McBee: Yeah. I really like that exclusion list for eliminating waste, and I'm sure our advertisers do as well. Phil, how important is reporting for political advertisers and what should they be looking for in a provider? Phil Vavelidis: Yeah, so I mean of course reporting is extremely important for all political advertisers and not one report or one type of report fits the bill with all of them. And so that's why it's beneficial for us with our political clients that they can see the depth of all the different types of reporting that we have to offer, whether that's reporting on revenue, we've driven from fundraising campaigns, or measuring foot traffic of users heading to polling locations. It's also why it's important to sit down with someone like our political CS team when you're working with vendors and ensure that they're building out customized weekly reports, reporting dashboards, anything that might fit you and your client's needs. One other thing I'd like to call out, however, which I think is just as important as reporting is the level of transparency that's provided. And that's one thing I know we certainly focus on. We offer all of our clients both self-serve and managed service a log into our platform. And so there aren't a lot of other vendors in the market that I've seen do something like this. We allow our managed service clients to see exactly how campaigns are being built out in real time, pull reporting in real time. We allow our clients the ability to even see down to how every cent in their CPM is being spent, whether it's on data fees, the cost of media, et cetera. And so I haven't seen or heard of another vendor who provides that level of transparency. And quite honestly, if I'm running a campaign, I'd like to see that my budget is being spent as efficiently and effectively as possible, especially when, like we mentioned before, those CPMs become highly competitive. So we're upfront with our costs, we're upfront with our fees, and we let that transparency hold us accountable. And I think heading into such high stakes like this election year, that's something that most clients should be keeping in mind. David McBee: Yeah, I'm sure they appreciate that transparency. All right, Phil, before we wrap things up, I know you attended the Reed Awards last week and Simpli.fi won the award for best political service team. Can you speak to that and what separates our political service team from other clients? Phil Vavelidis: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we're all really proud of that team and I'm thrilled that they got the recognition that they deserve with that award. This isn't something that we take lightly, especially when it comes to our political clients because that team is quick moving, they pivot often, priorities and budgets shift constantly. And so to be recognized for having the best team to provide that level of service is huge. Our success as a political partner relies heavily on that team, and so it's an awesome achievement for us just as an organization overall. David McBee: Yeah, we love that. We love a little humble brag here and there. All right, Phil, so if someone wants to get ahold of you or follow you on social media, what's the best way for them to do that? Phil Vavelidis: I would say LinkedIn. I've pretty much blocked out every other social media platform from here until election day, so I would say LinkedIn is definitely the best way. David McBee: All right. We'll look for you there. Thank you so much for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. Phil Vavelidis: Thanks David. I appreciate it. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored, of course, by Simpli.fi, helping to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee, be awesome and we'll see you next time.