Karina Shedrofsky

USA TODAY

As election day approaches, down-ballot races are shifting advertising efforts away from TV towards YouTube, using new and creative ways to reach voters in these final three weeks.

Julie Hootkin, executive vice president at Global Strategy Group and democratic pollster, said TV is a good mechanism for introducing candidates to voters, but digital works better as voters are trying to evaluate candidates, learn more about them and fill in the missing pieces from what they may have seen on TV.

“It becomes increasingly important as voters move from the awareness stage to the decision-making stage,” she said. “That’s why in the home stretch digital becomes an increasingly important tool.”

Frank Luntz, political consultant and GOP pollster, said TV has become too over-saturated this year, “everyone is advertising and it’s impossible to individualize and personalize the message.”

Digital advertising, on the other hand, allows more intricate targeting so candidates can send different messages to different people.

Tim Cameron, digital director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which supports Republican U.S. Senate candidates, said Marco Rubio, for example, can send different messages to voters in Florida with a Cuban background and those with a Puerto Rican background, rather than sending one message to all Spanish-speaking voters.

According to Tim Lim, partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic digital marketing firm, digital videos play an important role as election day nears because they don't take too much time to create.

“It’s much quicker to be able to turn around a YouTube or online video campaign and launch that then it would be to get an ad shot and send it to broadcast TV stations,” Lim said.

Digital videos are also cheaper than a 30 second spot on broadcast TV, Luntz said. “All the things that campaigns require speed up the closer you get to election day,” he said. “And with money tight, digital is much easier, faster and less expensive."

But the political shift towards online advertising has been steady since 2012. Cameron said the NRSC has been pushing their campaigns to spend 30-40% of their budgets on digital because “more and more people are watching less and less TV,” and some people are cutting the cord all together.

In just the last year, people have watched over 110 million hours of candidate- and issues-related video on YouTube, according to Google Data. And, according to eMarketer, people are spending 40% more time online than watching TV this year compared to 2012.

"Television isn't having the same impact that it had 2 years ago, 4 years ago, and 6 years ago," Cameron said. "To make up for that we need to be advertising where people are actually consuming content."