Bringing Digital Advertising Into Reach For Campaigns Of All Sizes – Andy Yates (Republican Ads)

Andy Yates:

We can drill down and make sure your persuasion is only going to persuasion, and you're putting GTV messaging in front of the folks that are already in your camp.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Our guest today is Andy Yates, co-founder of Republican Ads, a self-service digital advertising platform built for G O P campaigns. He's had a long background running political efforts. In this conversation, we learn more about the political advertising space, his entrepreneurial journey, and what we can expect to see in the upcoming midterms. Andy, there are a lot of digital agencies out there placing ads for clients and, and platforms like Google and Meta offer, self-service advertising. How does Republican ads fit into that overall ecosystem for campaigns?

Andy Yates:

I think what what sets us apart is a few things. Number one is we the only voter targeted digital advertising platform built by conservatives. For conservatives. We only work with Republican candidates. We only work for conservatives for conservative causes. That way we're not taking what we learn working from you all and giving it to your opponents so they can beat you. I think that sets us apart from a lot, a lot of folks out there. And I think that's important in this ecosystem and that the fact that our platform is built for politics, we're not, it's not built for any other purpose. It's built strictly for politics with candidates in mind, campaigns in mind, by people who have decades of experience working on campaigns. So we know what it needs to have in it to work right for candidates. I think the other things that, that matter a lot, one is the scalability.

Our platform is, is works for presidential ies. We worked with one in the 2020 cycle works for us Senate gubernatorial candidates. It's worked for congressional candidates, but it's also worked for the smallest local candidates you can imagine. I've been working this week with a candidate for coroner in Kentucky. <Laugh>, a small town, doesn't get much smaller than that. We had some primaries in 2020 in Wyoming, one primary where there's less than a thousand voters that we're gonna show up in the primary. So it works for everybody on all of these different races. We u unlike Facebook and Google Ads, we still have great match rates because we haven't eliminated the political targeting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Ad Week will tell you, Facebook now only matches about 35% on political. We're matching north of 90% from our, both our internal data as well as some custom data candidates bring us.

So we are able to reach your voters wherever they go online. And that's the key here. I mean, you wanna reach voters where they spend their time, where they spend their times online, and that's voters for the big statewide races. That's voters for the, you know, the corner race in Kentucky or the town commission race in Huntersville, North Carolina, where I live. And then it gives control to the candidate, to the campaign. They're in control setting up exactly how they want it. We, we provide help. We're happy to walk 'em through the process. We, you know, we have an a ops team. We monitor everything, but truly the control is in the hands of the candidate or the campaign manager, the consultant, to set the campaign up the way they want it. And then we have an unprecedented level transparency because we offer real time reporting. So you can log in at 2:00 AM on a Sunday morning and know exactly how your campaign's doing, how many impressions it's served, the frequency, your video completion rate, your cost per voter res, all the stats to need that you need to know to understand how well your campaign's running.

Eric Wilson:

And that's something that I spend a lot of time talking to our investors and entrepreneurs about. They don't really <laugh> appreciate just how vast those down ballot races are and, and their elections every, every year, every month perhaps. And, and being able to build a solution that works for all of those types of campaigns is really important. You know, our, our goal is to work with every campaign on the Republican side. And, and the only way you can do that is, is like what you're doing with, with software. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And there's also this, this really important aspect of it is that's, that's where you're building the bench.

Andy Yates:

It, it really is. I think it's critical. I mean, there are this year alone, right now, over 30,000 candidates or Republican candidates or unaffiliated candidates or nonpartisan candidates like school board races that our Republicans running for Office of the United States right now, over 30,000. Wow. These folks are making decisions that affect your day-to-day lives, probably in a bigger way than anything that happens in your state capital or Washington dc You know, they're, they're, they're deciding you know, about your children's schools, about your police service, your fire service, your roads, I mean, big decisions that affect everything you do in a day to day life. And these folks deserve the tools, be able to get their message out there to folks. Plus, they're, they're the future of our party. They're, they're who gonna be our leaders at the national level in 10, 15, 20 years. I mean, US Senator Tom Tills, who lives up the road from me, tells a great story about how he got historic.

Cornelius is a PTA president, and then he complained about the lack of mountain bike trail. So they put him on the parks and rec board next year he was a talent commissioner. Five years later, he's a speaker of the North Carolina house. Four years later he is in the US Senate. Not everybody's gonna have that story, but that's where these folks come from. And we have the opportunity now to get 'em on our platform, teach 'em how to reach voters online, teach 'em how to be smart with digital, teach 'em how to win so that as they work their way up, a the better candidates are able to work their way up. Cause they win their first races. But, so as they work their way up, the learning curve is not as steep. And we're able to win elections by utilizing the best in digital technology that's out there with the targeting. We've got great messaging on our side. We're right on the issues, but it doesn't matter if we don't get it in front of the right people where they spend their day, which is online.

Eric Wilson:

Right. And I think a really important piece of context here for our listeners to understand is that the business model of, of digital agencies when it comes to advertising does not really scale to smaller campaigns. Because your, your model when you're doing media placement is getting a percentage of the buy. And so I think you guys, I I saw on your website do like a $250 minimum. I think, and, and so for, for a an agency, if they're, if they're trying to make a living off of that, it's gonna be very difficult. And so that's why technology builds in some efficiencies and, and why it's an important addition to this, this marketplace.

Andy Yates:

Absolutely. And that's, that's what we've tried to do. We've tried to limit the barriers to entry. It's a $250 minimum for geo-targeted campaigns. $500 minimum for voter targeted campaigns. We've already got all the data you need built to the platform. We'll match your custom audiences, the custom data you bring as well. But we've got eight pre-built universes for every city, county, zip code, state, legislative district congressional in the country already there in the platform. You could place an ad campaign in less than 10 minutes in six steps. Truly if, if you can go onto Gmail or Yahoo or whatever email service you've got and check your email, you can place an ad campaign on our platform and take you less than 10 minutes. And within an hour, voters are seeing your ads. So it, it's a great asset for those folks. It gives, it makes it easy for them to use it. It also makes it easy for the consulting firm that's got a million things going on in the last three weeks of a race to get a digital campaign up so they can get back to doing whatever the other million things they all have to do right now.

Eric Wilson:

Right. So Andy, you've gotta be sitting on a lot of data. Not just the, the, the targeting data, but, but what people are spending, what they're saying. Are there any interesting trends that you've been seeing this election cycle?

Andy Yates:

There's a coup a couple of trends I think that are interesting. One thing, and I've actually had a reporter reach out, interview me about the, this, this week is the shift in spending from your Google adds, your fa your Facebook or meta ads to more programmatic digital. I think that's a big trend that you're starting to see this cycle just for, for whatever reason. We could talk, we could do a whole show about the first one, right? Google and Facebook won't go there. But I think a lot of it's got to do with those match race. They've limited political targeting. So the spins are moving into programmatic realm. The other, and, and digitals going through the world. I mean, ctv, everybody loves ctv this cycle in July, according to Nelson. More people watch streaming television than watch cable or broadcast first time ever.

So that you, you're seeing, you know you know, multiple times the spending on CTV you've seen in the past. And I'm seeing local candidates, you know, people for county commission or sheriff wanting to do CTV seeking us out cause they can do ctv. I think the other big thing though is at a, at a more macro level in terms of data, is you're seeing fewer people in the persuasion bucket than you've ever seen. There's less split ticket voting going on in the US than than ever. Right? Now people talk about, oh, the increasing number of unaffiliated voters, which is very much true, but people aren't splitting their tickets. They're going one way or the other, each cycle. And what we're seeing when I'm seeing, when I look at data is in most districts, most of your voters are in your get out the vote universe, not your persuasion universe.

That, that's one of the big trends. And you know, I think right now there's, I mean I saw a, a rasmus pullout this morning, only 7% nationally undecided on the generic congressional ballot. So you do that persuasion messaging, but it's really, you know, get your GTV messaging out there down the stretch, and then be precise, precisely targeted with that persuasion. And I think that's where we can help. We can drill down and make sure your persuasion is only going to persuasion and you're putting GTV messaging in front of the folks that are already in your camp.

Eric Wilson:

Well, so that's, that's one mistake that campaigns can, can make with their online advertising. What are, what are some other common mistakes that you see that well maybe your platform helps them avoid or, or, or they might need to be aware of?

Andy Yates:

Well, you know, I think for down about candidates, it's, it's not, it, it's lack of data and it's, which we've accounted for. Cause the data's already there. That's a big barrier for those folks. But I think, you know, and I think another one is being able to narrow down their list. They come in and they want to just go to everybody. And a lot of platforms will just make it easy for do that. We've got it right there. We spell out for them what the different offices our platform are so they know exactly what works for their district, what makes sense. I think that's a big pitfall for those folks. The other thing I will tell you on the, on the creative side for, you know, kids is trying to do too much in an ad mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, you, you know, one message, one ad, simple message, get it across that, that, that sort of thing. Just try, especially with display, people will try, you'd be amazed at what people try to fit in on <laugh>. Yeah. A 300 by two 50 display

Eric Wilson:

Op-Ed on there. Yeah,

Andy Yates:

Exactly. So that, that's the thing. You keep, keep it simple and put front, front of the voters what, what they want. I think that's a, that's a big part of it as

Eric Wilson:

Well. Yeah. I think when it comes to, to online advertising, just like with social media and this is something I write about over on best practice digital.com all the time is, is it's more important to understand why you're doing because what you're doing rather than how to specifically do it. Because I think a lot of people come and say, Oh, well they, they know that they need to advertise online. And they might know that they need to do it because that's where, where people are, but they don't actually understand advertising. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Right? So this is kind of it, It has brought advertising to more candidates than ever before. And they don't realize that it, it takes repetition of a message against the defined audience multiple times before you, before you get there. So I I, I definitely take your point on, on expanding too large. And you know, I I think you could go the other way too. So one of the things that you're doing new for this cycle is this, this hyper targeted geo TV ads or you, what are you calling it? You have a really clever name for it.

Andy Yates:

Yeah. It's closing argument. Closing

Eric Wilson:

Argument. Yeah. I wrote

Andy Yates:

Org. We did a little, we did it some at the end of the 20 cycle and then we've stepped it up for this cycle. I'm very excited about it. We had good luck with it. Some big congressional wins with Young Kim and Michelle Steel on the IE side and 20 in California. Really neat technology where we're able to drop and, and it works for advance for rallies as well. But what we're specifically pushing with the closing argument is where we're able to drop a pin at any voting location in the country, either on election day or during early voting and serve a, the pin is dropped right at that location. Serve ads to people who are within a 200 yard radius of the entrance to their voting location. And only while they're in that radius so that they see ads while they're playing on their phones, while they're waiting in line.

Because what do we all do in America right now where we wait in line? We don't talk the people next to us, God forbid we have to talk to somebody. We get our phone out and play on our phone and check the weather or read the, or the sports scores or see what we're gonna cook for dinner that night. You know, we're, we're all playing on our phones and now we're able to flood those folks with ads and we set, you know, we set our bids high enough that we're winning almost every bid we go after. So we're flooding folks with ads while they're waiting in line at the precinct. And you can pick and choose your precinct. So you know, you don't, you go to the ones that are key for your, for your success. Right. And you're able to flood those folks. You're the last thing they see before they go in the ballot. So a close race like the Kim and still race, were in California. That's important. And for your down ballot race is where, you know, I may not even have realized Superior Court judge was on the ballot. I'm now, I saw what had five times. I was waiting in line for Eric Wilson for Superior Court Judge. And I go in and I see his name on the belt. I'm gonna press that button. Even I don't know anything about it, but

Eric Wilson:

I saw the name. Right. The name is familiar and that's enough for me. Yeah.

Andy Yates:

Yeah. So it, I need, it's a neat, neat technology. We saw great luck with that in the limited fashion in 20 up and down the ballot. Now we are really expanding it, pushing, making a major part of our offering this cycle. And very excited about it. I don't know if anybody else offered anything like this. Certainly on the right. And it's, it's easy. You plug the address, the precinct in and that's, that's all, all you gotta know is the address of your precinct. You don't know it. We'll help you, we'll help you. We'll we'll make it foolproof for you. Make it easy for get your ads up and it's $250 for the day. From the time the polls open, they close. I serve an ad to everybody that walks up.

Eric Wilson:

So I wanna unpack that for a little bit, cuz there, there, there are a lot of misconceptions about geotargeting or geofencing where, where people think it can do things that it can't. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it, it's not magic. Can you, you don't have to give away your, your secret sauce, but give us a sense of how, how are you able, not not just you, but how are people in general able to gather that data? What are some of the limitations?

Andy Yates:

Sure. So we're, you know, Well the big, the big limitation is I can't tell you who we serve the ads to. I can tell you how many impressions we serve, what the frequency was, that sort of thing. I can't tell you that we reached NDA eights or Eric Wilson or Yeah. Our friend Bill Green or whoever else I, Any answers. Cause there's

Eric Wilson:

Probably, So could have just been someone walking by the school Yes. At that time. Yeah.

Andy Yates:

Well, and the thing is, you know, there, this is geo target. It's not voter targeted. It's anybody walking up, you know, we're not, you know, this doesn't have the partisan screen on it or things like that. So wanna be fully trans. Our goal is always be fully transparent with people. You're reaching everybody that's in line. So you're gonna give some impressions of people who probably won't consider you because they don't like the, your, they don't like the brand next to your name, but you're st you're able to reach those key people there that are voting. And it's by dropping a pin on that location and then setting that tight radius around the pin, what makes it work. And we're tar you know, we're able to serve ads that on, on mobile devices to people while they're there. And then we, we set it up so we only serve that radius. So once they leave, they quit getting the ads.

Eric Wilson:

Mm. Okay. You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Andy Yates, co-founder of Republican Ads. You could find them@republicanads.com. Easy to remember. So Andy, let's shift now a little bit to your entrepreneurial journey. How did you decide to go from operative to entrepreneur?

Andy Yates:

Well my wife decided she wanted me to make more money. I could make more money being,

Eric Wilson:

I'll do it <laugh>.

Andy Yates:

Now. I, you know, I always kind of, I loved being an operative. I spent, you know, as I tell folks, I spent eight years, I guess doing every campaign job you could imagine, including some that have been thankfully eliminated by technology <laugh> like yeah, the first cycle I worked in 2002, I, I was one of my titles of several as they are on congressional campaigns was Press Assistant, which is a fancy term that meant that I got to go through all the newspapers every day and cut out the articles and photocopied them and fax them to our press secretary in DC and then paste 'em on a piece of paper and file 'em away in a file cabinet. I

Eric Wilson:

Used to, I didn have that job too though.

Andy Yates:

<Laugh>, Thank goodness nobody has to do that anymore. Eric. That was what too. This is another,

Eric Wilson:

I think people don't realize where, where Clips come from. Yeah.

Andy Yates:

Oh yeah, the clip.

Eric Wilson:

She used to clip it out.

Andy Yates:

Oh yeah, Clip. We would clip it out and we would take a glue stick, glue it on a piece of construction paper and file it by category to file cabinet. And that, I mean, you know, so I spent, you know, eight years doing things doing that and then moving up to being a campaign manager, you know, in congressional race and working on a governor's race, Uck affairs races. I decided to start my own general consulting firm based in North Carolina where I live. And then we started doing stuff all of the country, partly cause of entrepreneurial side probably cause I wanna put my experience to work for candidates up and down the ballot. Did a lot of state legislative and congressional and I just fell in love with digital advertise. I started using it probably the first time in 2014. And I was even using it.

And a lot of it was Facebook back then, but even on the front side of voter, targeted on down ballot races and was seeing tremendous results on down on everywhere, but particularly on down ballot races. Not necessarily cause we were spending a ton of money on it, but cause we're the only kid at the race doing it. And the novelty work that it, it reached people whether spend more and more of their time. But as I kept watching digital, I got, you know, I got frustrated with the, you know, with the lack of infrastructure on the right, on the technology side. We had plenty of great digital creative firms. We have plenty of great direct mail firms that do digital. TV firms show up consultants that do digital. They do great messy, they do beautiful design. I'm not out for a place. Those folks, I hope they'll use me as a tool to help with their targeting, their placement.

But what we were lacking was something built as we call ourselves, built by conservatives for conservatives that really brought that, that built up the tech infrastructure that was scalable and gave campaigns and consultants candidates control. But left was building that up. We weren't, and I sat down with some friends in 2019 my bus, this partner I set down and we started really looking at what was going on digitally, where the hole was, where opportunities were. And we saw opportunity, A, to help the calls and make a difference and b, to build a business. So that's why, you know, that that's where this came out of. And I tell people I'm still learning to be an entrepreneur every day. I sure wish I'd taken a lot more business classes in college. You know, my, my advice to, you know, young kids coming up on campaign. I get young kids that wanna work on campaigns that reach out to me. Sometimes it's a donor or former client whose son, daughter wants to do it. And they asked me what the advice is. My first piece of advice is don't take all political science classes. Take some business courses too. People with politics do not understand business. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

That's, There's no better way to learn than to do.

Andy Yates:

Exactly. Exactly.

Eric Wilson:

So I, I think there, there are two things I hear in your entrepreneurial journey that I'm always excited to see. One is, there was a problem that you were experiencing and you went out and fixed it yourself. What has surprised you the most about building a software based company? Cuz you're not just an entrepreneur, you're also building software and that comes with its own joys and challenges

Andy Yates:

Besides how much fun developers are to work with that we actually have a great cto. I give him a hard time, but we went, we went route and rattle that early. Now we've got, I think, the best CTO in the business. But I think what surprised me is actually having built a GC business is yes, the technology side is challenging, having to learn that. But mostly I rely the experts there. I figure out what I know what I want to happen. And I go to our, my business partner who's worked in digital tech for a while. I go to our CTO and I say, Can we do this? And then I'll listen to the experts on that stuff. I I'll learn that quickly. But the thing that surprised me is that building the business side of it was not that different than building a general consulting business.

It's rolling up your sleeves, not being afraid to work hard. It's a, it's a relational relationship business. It's building relationship with these small candidates. It's building a relationship with consulting firms. Ies It's providing people with quality service. It goes back to what we all hopefully learned in Sunday school growing up. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. And that that's a, you know, if you treat other people the way you wanna be treated, you work hard. You re you're responsive. That that's, that's, that's a lot of it, Eric. I mean, you know, there's no, there's no shortcuts in, in building a business. And it's, it's, you know, I think you think about the be advice I give people is a, you know, make sure you've identified a problem and come with a solution for it. Cause if there's not a problem out there to solve, I think you hit it down on the head, There's not a problem out there to solve for your business.

To solve business is probably not gonna go anywhere. Right. That's just reality. And then the other thing is, there's no short there, there's no shortcuts. You know, it's, it, it, it's hard. It's, it's not easy. Every, every day's different, which I love. But you know, there are days when I wake up and go, why did I not choose the path of, you know, of getting outta college at Wake Forest and going on the salary track and knowing how much I'm gonna bring in every day and not have to wake up in the middle of the night worried about, you know, revenue projections and bills and, and all the fun stuff we worry about as entrepreneurs. I wouldn't have it any other way though. Cause you're actually building something and making a difference. And when it comes together, there's not anything else more in your professional life that can give you any more satisfaction than seeing a startup business come together.

Eric Wilson:

That is e extremely rewarding. And, and one thing that we miss a lot is, you know, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> people, people like those, those, those fairy tales. But that's not really how it works. And, you know, I want to share a challenge that a lot of our entrepreneurs face and, and it really makes it difficult for software as a service SAS businesses to, to thrive in politics because every sale is an enterprise sale, right? People wanna sit down and have a phone call, have a steak dinner with you, and get you across the table from them and want to have had done work with you before they sign off on you. Well, that's great when it's gonna be a $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars project. But when you've got minimums like $250, that doesn't necessarily scale. So I wanna hear from you, how have you dealt with that challenge? You know, like this, this coroner candidate for example. How did they find you? How do you, how do you make sure that you get them the value without sinking your business? <Laugh>

Andy Yates:

A absolutely. So I think a couple there. One, how they find us, I'll, I'll go that route first. I mean, one of the things that we do is we use our platform to advertise our platform. It's a great proof of performance. And it also, it also works cause our platform works. So we take, we ingest data about candidates running for all, all of the country into our platform, match it and serve digital ads to those folks. And we have inbound weeds coming in every day from these folks who've seen our ads and wanna learn more about our platform we use. So, you know, beyond that, we use, we, we email folks, we text folks, we use social media. I mean I have to give a shout out to Sarah as set up our marketing team. They've produced a tremendous, they, they, they do god's work.

They produce a tremendous amount of leads for us and always coming up with new ideas outside the box for these folks. But other goes back to using, using our platform to sell the platform. And if folks have seen our digital ads, they know it works. So I don't, they don't have to go convince 'em. It works. Yeah. They already know it works. I think other thing that's key for these folks is, you know, that the is is that we made the platform so easy that I can explain it to them in a 30 to 45 minute phone call and answer all their questions. And also have spent a third of that call learning about their race, their mom, their kids, their favorite football team. Cause we, everybody has a story and wants to tell it. So you know that. So, you know, I spent 15 minutes doing that.

I spent 20, 30 minutes telling 'em about the platform. They, they're completely comfortable going to use it on their own at that point. A lot of folks, I have that call with them, they're off to the races and it's just me checking back in on 'em. The response is everything's okay. So that, I think that's key to it is, you know, leveraging technology so you're not having to hold their hand constantly throughout the process. Cuz you're right, when somebody's spending 2 50, 500, $5,000, you can't hold their hand every day. Right. I, I mean, I'm a people person. I'll talk to these people as my, my fault is I'll probably talk to these people every time they call me, I'm gonna answer their call. I love talking to people. But you know, from a business person's perspective, you've got to be marvel at time. And you gotta, you know, when you're building something Scottish, you got a ton of clients pour in. So you gotta get to all of 'em. So I think a lot of it is, is the technology side using that, making it so easy. It's not a lot of handholding, it's reaching those folks using our platform to reach the people that are gonna use the platform.

Eric Wilson:

Your customers are also clear on what the alternatives are, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the the alternatives are not advertising at all. Which, which really isn't an option or something that's really, really expensive that would, would ultimately lead to not advertising. So I do think it helps when you, you know, your customer, it's, the offering is very clear and, and fully automated. Which kudos to you and your, your team for, for making that process so, so seamless. I know it's not easy.

Andy Yates:

Yeah, no it's not. And I, I really appreciate that. I think that, I think those are wise words. I think the other key is something a lot of our, a lot of people in our business don't do is stay in your lane. You know, if you're trying to go business in politics, stay in your lane, find 1, 2, 3, no more probably than three things you're really good at. Do those and be really good at them. Too many people try to be all things to everybody. And you know, it's tempting, especially when you start for business. It was tempting for me our first cycle to go, Oh yeah, we can do that too. And now I'm to the point where it's, you know, you know, you, you want text messages, that's great. Here's the email from my friend Nicole at Campaign hq. You know, you need, you need direct mail.

Here's three direct mail firms to use us for digital. Reach out to these folks. Decide, figure out who you wanna work with there. We do what we do and we'll, I'm hap glad to help with other stuff. I'm glad to, I'm even glad if you want me to look at something and tell you whether I think it's good or not, I'm happy to do that. You know, I enjoy it. But stay in your lane and refer people to your friends if they want something that's done outside of your lane. Don't get distracted by trying to do stuff. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn cuz you're trying to build a business, you just want revenue. So you kind of drift, drift a lot and lose focus. And I, I feel like I'm drilled in and focused now and it's, it's made a difference.

Eric Wilson:

I think that's something a lot of people don't anticipate when they're building these platforms for down ballot races because they just haven't gotten much attention from the traditional consultants. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so, you know, rival, a company that we work with builds websites for candidates and they find themselves in the same position where they're like, Okay, well I've got a website now how do I do advertising? Or how do I do mail? And they're like, Well, you know, we're, we're happy to help you on this, but that, that's not, not our role. So these, these sort of self-service platforms can be a, a really important point of entry. And I mean, I just just think about the power of making new campaigns that much better. So, Andy, outside of advertising, is there another problem that campaigns face that you think would make for a good startup that maybe you'll do someday or, or hope someone else tackles?

Andy Yates:

So I hope someone else tackles it, but I think the challenge is, and it's one I've thought about, it's something that, that I see for down ballot candidates in particular, and even I would say state legislative kids, which I call middle of the ballot candidates, I guess is the design side of the world. These folks have, you know, they've got their message down, you know, most of 'em have some idea of who they need, who they need to reach, but design is something they really struggle with. And I think there's an opening out there for someone to build a startup that can create, you know, templates that these folks can use to easily create design that works for digital, you know, maybe even for other advertising verticals, but display ads, video ads, things like that. I think there's a real opening there for that because that's, that's a, that's the, the other barrier for entry for folks.

You know, we, we try to help folks with that when they, when they need it. But that, that's something that discourages folks or I think even keeps strokes from getting started. And we do cold outreach to down ballot, middle of the ballot candidates. And that's one of the things we hear is we don't have the assets, we don't have the knowledge to put it together. You know, took me and I had, you know, somebody I wish they'd told me we could have helped em and they came back to me to disappeared for two weeks and I couldn't get up with 'em. They came back and sorry, I was gone. I was begging friends to help me with design. And finally some found somebody to help do that. So, you know, it's slowing these campaigns down and I think there's an opportunity there if somebody, you know, somebody to put their hit or a group of somebodies to put their heads together and, you know, come up with you know, a, a Canva for a Canva for political causes and candidates, right? It can, you know, put the guard rails up to help these folks not only create design, but create good design. Cause you can, you can imagine some of the things we see from time to time and, you know, people like how he explained it to folks. But, you know, we do try to tell folks, you know, this, you know,

Eric Wilson:

Graphic design is my passion. You

Andy Yates:

Know, you might wanna rethink that. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

Well Annie, thank you so much for joining us today. You can learn more about Republican ads@republicanads.com. Check out their offerings there. There's a link available in the show notes. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or it gave you something to think about or something new to try, all that we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague. It makes you look smarter in the process. So it's a win-win. Remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you'd like, you can go to our new website, business of politics podcast.com to sign up for email updates, let you know every time a new episode goes live. So with that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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