Gone are the days when local political campaigns could get by with a list of radio stations tacked to the wall. Rivaling the biggest national efforts, local races have become incredibly
sophisticated in terms of measurement and targeting, according the experts at MediaPost’s Marketing Politics conference on Tuesday. “There’s a lot more sophistication and nuance
… to enable one-to-one targeting,” said Gayatri Bhalla, COO at political data special Catalist. Local campaigns are “targeting in a way that was never possible,” said Jim
Walsh, CEO at DSPolitical. Yet, the vast majority of political spending still goes directly to TV -- about 90% to 95%, by Walsh’s estimation. And the reason is simple. “Most of the media
budgets are still controlled by TV guys.”