The challenge: Expanding reach beyond the initial TV campaign
Smart Media Group (SMG), a political advertising agency, launched an issue/advocacy campaign targeting voting households across two congressional districts. While the initial two-week TV campaign delivered broad audience coverage, additional opportunity remained to reach key voting households that had not yet been exposed to the campaign’s message.
To maximize the political advertising campaign’s impact without driving up spend, SMG needed a data-driven approach to identify unreached households, extend reach efficiently, and ensure advertising investments delivered incremental value.
The solution: LENS insights combined with addressable precision
SMG partnered with Comcast Advertising to move beyond traditional audience-based planning and identify exposure opportunities at the household level.
Using LENS, Comcast Advertising’s AI-powered audience discovery engine, combined with audience insights and set-top-box viewing data, we identified voting households within the two congressional districts that were not exposed, or had limited exposure, to the initial campaign. These household-level insights enabled us to build custom addressable segments composed entirely of previously unreached or lightly reached voter audiences.
SMG then launched an eight-day Audience Addressable campaign across linear TV, CTV, and streaming. The campaign was designed to extend reach among priority households while minimizing duplication among households already reached. The Audience Addressable extension increased the overall media budget by just 6%, demonstrating how data-driven targeting can help campaigns maximize reach and efficiency through a coordinated cross-platform strategy.
The outcome: +29% incremental reach
The results were exceptional: This strategy increased overall reach by 29%, adding 4,800 unique households that would have been missed by television alone. These incremental impressions accounted for 22% of the total campaign reach yet raised the overall cost by only 6%, a testament to the efficiency of this approach. By combining linear TV scale with data-driven targeting, we helped to ensure that every dollar spent contributed to meaningful voter audience engagement.
The takeaway: Every voter reached counts
This campaign demonstrates how combining TV’s scale with household-level audience insights can uncover additional reach opportunities and improve campaign efficiency.
By identifying and activating households that had not yet been exposed, SMG expanded campaign reach, reduced audience duplication, and maximized the impact of its advertising investment, delivering measurable results among key voting audiences.