• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 18, 2024

Although Presidential campaign political advertising efforts have ramped up, media efforts for both Vice President Harris and former President Trump are missing important viewers.

“Surprisingly... we’re seeing some crucial voting blocs under-exposed,” says Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of Samba TV. “Media agencies working for the political campaigns have a real opportunity to leverage data for real-time targeting to reach the swing voters more effectively.”

Samba says both Harris and Trump campaigns are both struggling to reach diverse audiences with their TV ads -- under-indexing among Hispanic and Asian households. Harris is doing a bit better -- under-indexing by 23% and Trump by 32% when compared to the rest of the U.S. At the same time, Samba says they are over-indexing among white audiences.

Looking more broadly, Harris ads have reached a wider audience than Trump ads. Harris is at 697 million impressions and 44.4 million U.S. household reach, while Trump is at 497 million impressions and 34.8 million U.S. homes.

Lots of focus is of course, on the seven swing states -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Caroline, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

In those states, Spanish-language and sports programming are some of the highest-indexing content. 

Digging into specifics, for MSNBC and Fox News Channel, where viewers get much political content, diverse streaming programming was shown for each of those viewer groups.

 For MSNBC viewers, high-indexing programs include Hulu’s “The Bear”, Apple TV+’s “The Instigators” and Netflix’s “Find Me Falling.” For Fox News viewers: Paramount+’s “Mayor of Kingstown,” Netflix’s “Trigger Warning" and Netflix's "American Murder: Laci Peterson."

Perhaps what is missing from this is finding those independent political voters in those swing states -- whether those campaigns are under or over indexing against this group.

Samba has shed a little light on this. 

Undecided voters were not interested in tuning into the June’s Biden-Trump debate earlier this year. But that changed for the Harris-Trump debate recently. Specifically, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over-indexed for this group for that TV event.

Can campaigns find a way to jump on this key group in these crucial states?  Maybe those polls which see Harris surging are telling a story.