The Promethean Moment

The term “digital” has been in a state of flux since the birth of the internet.

Innovators like Joe Trippi and Hal Malchow brought digital into the political world, from the iconic “Dean bat” to some of the first digital fundraising ads.

Barack Obama’s campaign connected offline organizing to the digital age with my.barackobama.com, and his re-election campaign harnessed our Facebook networks to incredible effect in 2012. 

And eight years later, the Biden campaign found novel ways to campaign in the first mostly virtual election.

We’re now at the precipice of convergence. A Promethean moment of democratization.

YouTube is the most watched channel on TV screens. CTV has surpassed cable and linear TV in viewers. More than half of TV households watch linear and streaming TV together as of late 2023.

What we watch is in a state of churn as subscriptions ebb and flow and premium content from live sports to syndicated shows bounce across platforms. The cable bundle gave way to ad hoc streaming bundles, and publishers are merging and forming their own bundles.

Ask a swing voter or your aunt (possibly the same person), do you watch CTV? They’ll probably give you a puzzled look. Because today, they just watch TV.

TV, a medium that changed American culture – we’ve been amusing ourselves to death for decades in Neal Postman’s prescient understanding, is now merging with digital.

CTV stands for connected TV, but it may as well be convergent TV. What was once an exclusive platform is being democratized.

The CTV presents an opportunity for political organizations and causes to combine the targetability of digital with the most powerful media medium. Sight, sound, motion, and emotion – TV screens deliver an immersive experience. And the most sustained attention of any video channel. And now, TV can be targeted in ways that Nielsen diarists could not have imagined just a few years ago.

Persuasion & Pixels is a guide through the CTV thicket. AVOD. FAST. vMVPD. ACR. Lots of noise. Lots of ways to plan and buy. The signal is what matters to you – votes and actions.

We have run eight-figure media campaigns harnessing innovative approaches.

We cut through the clutter and hype.

We zero in on what matters and what works.

The stakes have rarely been higher. Let’s win together.

Dall-E (generative AI) prompt, 1/5/2024. “A TV screen descending from the heavens to reach a gathered crowd of political candidates”