by Zach Rosen, SVP, BD & Partnerships at Multilocal
However, simply adding audience targeting to a deal strategy does not inherently solve the challenge. How the data is decisioned and packaged across the supply landscape is what matters most, because it enables political buyers to drive outcomes from the moment the first bid is activated and throughout the flight. That's why the partnership we announced last week with Aristotle is significant.
Together, Aristotle and Multilocal’s cureon combine trusted, compliant political audience data with a single, unified engine for omnichannel media planning, activation, and optimization, spanning CTV, video, display, app and audio. It is this pairing of precise data matched to precise execution that sets a new standard for political advertising.
Trusted Data, Intelligently Activated
Aristotle brings the industry’s most-trusted source for political and consumer data built on inputs that are compliant, consented, and brand safe. On its own, that data is valuable, driving strategies with many of the largest political campaigns on both sides of the aisle, as well as PACS and grassroots organizations. Activated through curation, it becomes far more powerful.
When political buyers can activate Aristotle audiences through an intelligence layer that refines and optimizes the media and data across multiple supply paths, the data delivers greater results on every campaign.
This approach accomplishes two objectives. First, it tailors a custom strategy to the unique requirements and KPIs of each campaign. And second, it activates audience segments with the highest quality inventory and through the most efficient supply paths—all before the first bid goes live.
This is a proven approach to driving better performance and more efficient campaign execution. In the last twelve months, our data indicates that wherever our cureon intelligence engine is activated, buyers observed a 40%+ lift across KPIs and a 37%+ reduction in media cost.
Critically, cureon's recommendations are never weighted toward a particular platform or media owner; every decision is made purely on suitability and performance potential. For political buyers, where impartiality carries as much weight as performance, that distinction matters enormously.
One Engine, Every Channel
Political media planning has always been split across siloed channels and platforms, which slows execution at precisely the moment campaigns need to move fastest. cureon removes that friction by giving political buyers a single point of entry into a wide network of supply partners and data sources, spanning dozens of major marketplaces and formats. Although linear TV retains the lion’s share of spend, CTV will become the fastest-growing segment in the midterm elections. Of particular importance is its ability to deliver targeted messages to precisely defined audiences within the districts parties want to influence.
Aristotle's audiences can now be deployed across CTV, video, display, and audio from one unified workflow, rather than managed piecemeal across fragmented platforms.
This enables political buyers to compress the distance between insight and activation. Ready-to-activate campaigns built on trusted political data can be planned, packaged, and distributed same day, meeting the speed requirements that today’s electoral cycles demand.
Optimization That Doesn't Stop at Launch
Campaigns don't succeed or fail at launch; they succeed or fail over the preceding days and weeks as events shift and audiences respond. This is where cureon's ongoing optimization capability comes into play.
Pairing automated performance diagnostics with hands-on human oversight, we can sharpen a campaign's performance while it's still in flight to maximize the value of every Aristotle audience segment.
For political buyers working with Aristotle's data, this means campaigns aren't set once and left to run. They're continuously refined against real performance signals, with a team of curation specialists interpreting, analyzing and adjusting, continuously, on each deal.
Why This Combination Matters Now
Record political spend is forecast across this year's election cycle, and the pressure to deploy it wisely has never been greater. Political buyers need data they can trust, a single point of activation across fragmented channels and platforms, and the ability to optimize continuously as conditions—and voter sentiments —change.
The partnership between Aristotle and Multilocal delivers exactly that: audience data grounded in compliance and consent, activated through an unbiased, unified engine, and optimized in real time.
It’s not simply a data activation or a media strategy. It is the combination of both, activated and optimized using curation, that gives political buyers the confidence to drive efficiently towards a winning outcome without compromising the trust their candidates expect.
