Digital and Advertising
The Herald Group develops targeted digital and advertising strategies that ensure your message reaches the right audiences. We’re driven by data, delivered across platforms, and reinforced through coordinated paid media.
Public affairs campaigns are shaped across digital channels, where policymakers, media, and stakeholders consume information and form opinions.
THE PROBLEM
Having the right content is no longer enough.
Having a compelling argument in an op-ed, website, or infographic doesn’t have the intended impact if the right people don’t see and remember it.
The most consequential policy debates are no longer won on a single channel. Policymakers, journalists, and the staff, advisors, and networks around them are fragmented across social platforms, streaming, display, and digital media. Audiences are harder to reach consistently, and easier to lose to competing narratives.
Success requires more than placing an ad. It requires the platforms, targeting, and frequency to put your message in front of the right audience, again and again, until it sticks.
Digital campaigns are most effective when they don’t just reach audiences—they surround them
Todd Van Etten
Chief Digital Strategist and Partner at The Herald Group
WHAT WE DO
Innovative Strategies + Extensive Capabilities
The Herald Group deploys integrated digital programs—built to amplify advocacy campaigns, issue engagement, and reputation management at every stage.
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Social Advertising
Campaigns designed to consistently reach and engage audiences with precision.
THG designs and manages targeted campaigns across major social platforms—including LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube—to reach policymakers, journalists, and key stakeholders where they engage every day. Campaigns are built to deliver precise audience targeting, high-frequency message delivery, and measurable engagement.
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Real-Time Optimization & Reporting
Performance-driven adjustments that maximize efficiency and inform ongoing strategy.
THG adjusts targeting, creative, and spend allocation in real time—ensuring programs remain efficient, responsive, and aligned with campaign objectives while providing clear, decision-ready reporting.
Reports detail not only what worked but why, allowing each campaign to build upon the last.
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Display Advertising
Consistent visibility and scale across the sites your audience already visits.
THG deploys programmatic display campaigns across desktop, mobile, and tablets that follow audiences across websites to build frequency among decision-makers and stakeholders throughout their day. Beyond standard banners, THG builds high-impact placements along with animated creative like moving GIFs and HTML5 rich media that catch the eye against static competitors on the same page.
These placements reinforce key message points from other channels, extend reach at scale, and keep your organization visible as audiences move across news sites, industry publications, and the broader web.
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Video & Streaming Advertising
High-impact formats that carry the longer, more complex argument that a static image can't hold.
THG deploys video campaigns across connected TV (CTV), streaming platforms (Hulu, Roku, YouTube), pre-roll inventory, and online video (OLV)—using the format's length and motion to walk an audience through a narrative, build a case, or explain a nuanced issue in ways a single image or headline can't.
Creative is built for the placement, not repurposed across it: a spot for traditional linear TV varies heavily from streaming and social. These placements reinforce campaigns with immersive, repeat exposure tailored to how and where each audience actually watches.
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Native Advertising
Blends your message into the trusted news environment your audience is already reading.
THG amplifies earned media, op-eds, and third-party content by placing headlines directly into recommended article sections on premium publisher sites such as Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other policy-relevant outlets. Creative takes on the style of the site. This ensures key audiences encounter your narrative beyond its original placement, increasing both reach and credibility.
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Audience-First Digital Targeting
A matrix of targeting methods that locks onto decision-makers and the people who influence them.
Our campaigns begin with identifying decision-makers and the influence ecosystem around them. We then use a matrix of data-driven targeting methodologies to reach and track that specific audience: 1:1 (individual-level) targeting, MAID-based historical location data, geofencing, account-based targeting (ABM), lookalike/modeling, and behavioral targeting. Layering these together drives up frequency with the audiences that actually shape the decision, while concentrating budget on the people who matter to the outcome rather than a broader audience that has no bearing on it.
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Branded & Unbranded Campaigns
Dual-track approach that balances visibility with credible, third-party validation.
THG deploys both branded advertising (featuring an organization’s name and message) and unbranded promotion (amplifying third-party validation without client attribution). This dual approach allows campaigns to reinforce credibility while also reaching audiences less receptive to direct advocacy.
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Out-of-Home Advertising (OOH)
Placements that reinforce digital messaging in high-visibility moments.
THG extends digital strategies into the physical environment through targeted out-of-home placements, including digital, mobile, and traditional billboards, transit ads, and placements near Capitol Hill, regulatory agencies, and key markets. This brings the digital messaging into the real world at key moments.
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Audio & Podcast Advertising
Reaches audiences in trusted environments where they are highly engaged.
THG places both programmatic audio buys across podcast and streaming inventory (Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and podcast ad networks) and direct, host-read placements within specific shows your audience already trusts — each layered with the same targeting matrix used across the rest of the campaign.
These screen-free placements are consumed during a commute, workout, or walk, capturing moments of unusually high attention without the visual clutter competing for focus. They extend frequency and reinforce the surround-sound effect built across every other placement.
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Websites & Digital Platforms
Centralized hubs that anchor campaigns and convert attention into action.
THG designs and develops websites and digital platforms built for public affairs campaigns—ensuring organizations have a credible, accessible, and optimized presence where stakeholders go to learn about an issue. From campaign microsites to full-scale platforms, we create digital destinations that reinforce messaging, support advocacy efforts, and serve as a hub for content, engagement, and activation.
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Sponsorship & Publication Advertising
Sponsored placements inside the publications your audience already trusts.
THG secures sponsorships and native placements within the newsletters, digital editions, and trade publications your key audiences read, from national policy outlets to the state and sector-specific publications that reach legislators, regulators, and stakeholders in the markets where your campaign is actually being fought. These placements put your message inside a trusted editorial product at the moment your audience is forming its view of the issue.
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Paid Search Advertising
Captures the moment someone is interested in your issue, ensuring your perspective is the source of truth.
THG runs paid Google Search campaigns, bidding on the keywords people are looking up when they’re researching an issue. This can capitalize on a spike in conversation about your issue or follow a broader awareness push that drives initial exposure. THG's search program is built to intercept the resulting searches, positioning our client as the clearest source on the issue rather than ceding that moment to news coverage, opposition messaging, or an uncontested results page.
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Scalable Program Design
Flexes with the moment — and the client's budget — instead of running one fixed spend level for the life of a campaign.
THG designs digital programs to flex with the political environment: surging spend and channels ahead of a markup, vote, or news cycle, then stepping back to a lower baseline once it passes. Creative flexes too, pausing or swapping placements within hours on most platforms to match the moment. Programs are also sized to a client's real resources: a national coalition effort and a single-state program need different architecture, not just different pricing.
Designed to Fit Your Needs
The most effective public affairs campaigns are not defined by a single channel or tactic.
They are driven by the ability to reach the right audiences, shape what they see, and reinforce that message over time.
Increase Credibility
By combining branded campaigns with third-party and unbranded promotion, we reinforce messages in ways that resonate and break through skepticism.
Shape the Information Environment
We ensure policymakers and stakeholders consistently encounter your narrative across the platforms that drive opinion and action.
Reach the Right Audiences
We target not just decision-makers, but the staff, media, and networks that influence their perspective.
Build Scale and Momentum
High-frequency, multi-channel campaigns make issues feel larger, more relevant, and harder to ignore.
Crisis-Facing Organizations
Companies that need fast, accurate intelligence on how a crisis is spreading, who is driving it, and where to respond first.
Activate at Critical Moments
We surge spending and channels at key policy and regulatory inflection points, then scale back to a sustained baseline once the moment passes.
Our Team
Meet the team behind THG’s digital and advertising practice—experienced professionals who combine deep public affairs expertise with the platforms, targeting, and media strategies that shape today’s information environment.
Todd Van Etten
Chief Digital Strategist
Todd leads THG’s digital practice, overseeing paid media, social programs, analytics, and creative direction to help corporations, trade associations, and coalitions translate digital engagement into real-world action.
Sharon Copeland
Vice President
Sharon specializes in building integrated digital campaigns that connect messaging, audience targeting, and execution.
Colin Hensel
Senior Director, Digital, AI Innovation and Analytics
A digital strategist and AI practitioner with experience spanning Capitol Hill, political campaigns, and advocacy, Colin leads The Herald Group's approach to AI innovation, online intelligence, and analytics.
Meet the Entire THG Team
Meet our entire team of political campaign mentalities, MBA acumen, and more.
Featured Insights
Veteran Advocacy Executive Joins THG Leadership Team and Adds Further Depth to Firm as 15th Addition in 2026
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