Three Challenges Election Campaigns Will Face on Digital, and How to Solve Them

[Commentary] For the next nine months, online ads will have a decidedly different flavor. Election season is in full swing and candidates ranging from presidential to mayoral are ramping up their advertising efforts. Television still gets more campaign dollars in total, but digital ad spend will hit record highs. Campaign consultants from the traditional media world are entering the digital fray as newcomers. Again and again, I’ve seen them run up against three major challenges while making the jump to digital: Ads running against the wrong content, lack of awareness of viewability problems, and straight-up mistargeting. To help curb these common issues, let’s talk about why they happen and what can be done to avoid them.

Brand safety: One of the greatest fears of companies running digital ads is seeing their ads running against completely inappropriate content, with the worst-case scenario often being an appearance on a seedy, not-suitable-for-work website.
Viewability: While TV suffers from its own viewability issues due to time-shifted viewing, it is digital that can provide measurement back to an advertiser on ads that are on a part of the Web page where the user never sees it.
Mistargeting: Running your ad for the completely wrong audience is about as effective as running your ads for houseplants.

[Matt Ross is the director of sales for AOL Advertising]