This Innovator Spotlight is from our newest report, Political Ads In Streaming: How Local and CTV Innovations Are Changing The Game.

“If you’re thinking about where to really run your political dollars and engage with key demos, you probably should be thinking about us,” notes Nyma Quidwai, VIZIO’s Senior Director of Client Services. “VIZIO gives you a highly engaged political audience. Just take a look at some of the stats — 87% of VIZIO viewers identify with a political party, 75% of VIZIO TVs watched news content in the last year, which is 32% more than the 2020 election cycle. Beyond that, we're seeing 38% of Vizio TVs are in households located in key swing states, which is where the bulk of this year’s political spending is happening.”

ALAN WOLK (AW): How does streaming fit into the broader effort to reach audiences? 

NYMA QUIDWAI (NQ): Our ACR data gives us insight into which ads have been served up on any opted-in VIZIO TV, across both streaming and linear. Given that most households are watching both, that’s a key advantage. We can then take that data and retarget any user in that household on their other devices. That means, for example, you can target users who regularly watch a specific type of news content on their VIZIO TV sets and reach them on mobile. That sort of data is not available with linear and it’s why campaigns that understand the value of digital-style data are shifting more budget to streaming and to platforms like VIZIO that can provide them with that data.

AW: Do you have a team dedicated to helping political campaigns navigate the CTV landscape?

NQ: Absolutely. We have a fully dedicated customer success team that really understands the nuances of political advertising. So whether it's targeting at scale, whether it's real time optimizations, or providing recommendations for tactics on how to leverage and utilize our ACR data, we're really here to help our clients every step of the way. And like any investment our partners make on the Vizio ads platform, it all starts with strategy and goals and really working together on best practices to achieve them.

AW: Overfrequency (when the same ad airs in the same household multiple times during the same show) can be a problem for brands advertising on CTV. How can you help political campaigns avoid this?

Like all our advertisers, political campaigns can monitor and manage how often their ads play on a specific TV device. So if a household is exposed to an ad three times during a linear buy, and optimally it needs to run six times, we can make up that difference. Or if the ad ran through linear eight times, we can recommend that the advertiser use a different creative. We can even recommend the best times to run the ads you’re buying from us in order to create the most impact within the parameters of your frequency capping requirements. 

AW: What sort of performance data can you provide for political campaigns?

NQ: All our campaigns come with the ability to measure performance. At minimum, we can provide verified reach and household frequency numbers so that advertisers know what they're getting. But we can also work with VIZIO analytics to correlate your ad exposure on our platform to activities such as visiting a web page or signing up for more information. Again, that’s something you’re not getting from a pure linear buy.

AW: Do you expect to see any innovations in ad formats from political campaigns this year, such as QR codes or other advanced options? 

NQ: Across the board, advertisers are getting really smart about utilizing calls to action and engagement with our CTV platform. So when it comes to soliciting specific actions, most of these campaigns want consumers to vote, which is not something you can do with QR codes. But one of the reasons political campaigns like working directly with VIZIO is that we have a team that’s fully dedicated to supporting their goals. So we might be able to offer up some creative ideas for interactive messaging, and because we own the device, we're able to create a very holistic messaging strategy. So we’re looking forward to seeing how we can take things one step further with our political clients in order to build and create these unique experiences using the tools that we have in house.