Dish, DirecTV Team For Addressable Political Ads

DirecTV and Dish Network are teaming up to offer addressable advertising to political campaigns.

Both satellite TV companies are able to deliver different ads to different subscribers on a household-by-household basis. Together they can reach more than 20 million households, providing significant scale to candidates for national, statewide and local office.

“The DirecTV/Dish addressable advertising platform utilizes highly sophisticated and targeted technology that will allow political campaigns to specifically reach swing voters with TV ads. Campaigns can focus their message to a precise set of potential voters and eliminate the spending waste,” said Keith Kazerman, senior VP of ad sales, at DirecTV, in a statement. “The platform not only uniquely monetizes big data, which has become critical to every political campaign, but it does it at scale. It’s the perfect complement to local DMA cable buys and a fiscally compelling alternative to local broadcast.”

During the 2012 presidential election, the Obama campaign was thought to have an edge on its opponent because it used advance data to target its message by buying low-cost cable ads instead of relying on local broadcast news, the traditional vehicle for reaching potential voters. Though broadcast still dominates campaign spending, cable and satellite have been gaining ground because of lower cost and more precise targeting.

Moody’s recently forecast that broadcasters would generate $2.6 billion in revenues from political ads in 2014.

“Individually, Dish and DirecTV have pioneered household-addressable advertising across a national footprint for more than two years,” said Warren Schlichting, senior VP of Dish media sales. “As campaigns utilize more and more data, household-addressable advertising introduces a powerful tool to deliver a tailored message to a precise and measurable audience. Together, Dish and DirecTV reach nearly one out of every five U.S. television households and usher TV into the modern political age.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.