Strategy Memo: Rethinking Visibility: How AI Actually Cuts Through the Political and Public Affairs Clutter
AI is everywhere in political and public affairs right now but almost no one is using it well. Everyone wants it in the pitch deck. Few can explain what it actually does. Meanwhile, 80% of digital budgets are still getting lit on fire.
That number isn’t hype. It’s from the Association of National Advertisers, which found only 36 cents of every programmatic dollar ever reaches a human. The rest gets swallowed up by fees, fraud, and phantom impressions. Add in frequency bloat, CTV overlap, and platforms grading their own homework, and most campaigns are flying blind.
The Conversation We Actually Need
I recently hosted a webinar with two of the sharpest strategists in the game to cut through the noise. No doomsday predictions. No “AI as silver bullet” narrative. Just a blunt, tactical conversation about what actually works.
Michael Beach is the founder and CEO of Cross Screen Media, one of the most advanced platforms for tracking viewership and attention across screens. If an ad ran last cycle, he knows who saw it, when, and where.
Brett Quick is Principal at Phronesis DC, advising top coalitions and Fortune 100s on public affairs. She’s a former Staff Director for the Senate Banking Committee and led government affairs at the Crypto Council for Innovation. She knows how influence really works, and what happens when it doesn’t.
In a business where message creation, targeting, and delivery decide outcomes, they understand exactly where AI is headed. And unlike the Bezos nuptials, Michael and Brett aren’t caught up in the hype. They’re focused on how AI tools actually move the needle.
Visibility ≠ Impressions
Let’s be clear: visibility doesn’t mean impressions. It means impact.
The platforms that are easiest to buy are hoarding spend, not because they’re effective, but because they’re frictionless. That leads to media plans where someone gets hit 18 times on their smart TV and never once on mobile. Or an advocacy campaign misses its window because legal’s still reviewing the creative and the messaging isn’t quite right. IYKYK.
Where AI Does Help
Want to use AI right? Use it to stop wasting time and money.
AI can now do in minutes what used to take your team 40 hours:
Audit bill text for changes
Map vote histories
Flag friction points in messaging
It’s your research assistant on Adderall and Celsius.
But it’s not your campaign manager.
That nuance matters. Brett put it best:
“AI can prep the room, but it can’t read it.”
She’s been inside the Senate and inside Fortune 100 boardrooms. She knows what it means to time a message, and what happens when you miss.
Reading the Room, Before It Happens
AI doesn’t tell you when to act. But it can show you what’s coming:
What are members talking about?
What keywords are trending in hearings?
What narratives are forming before they hit POLITICO?
If you’re waiting until it’s live fire, you’ve already lost.
Worried about AI replacing your team? It won’t.
But it will expose the teams that aren’t thinking.
AI Doesn’t Replace You. It Reveals You.
Anyone can drop talking points into ChatGPT. That’s not strategy.
What matters is how you prompt it, what you filter out, and what you do with the output.
Michael nailed it:
“The battleground isn’t impressions anymore. It’s interpretation of the message.”
AI won’t replace your media buyer.
But it will be the difference between buying reach and buying results.
Search Is Shifting. Are You Ready?
Sorry to break it to you, but the search funnel is collapsing.
Hill staff aren’t Googling your issue. They’re asking ChatGPT. That means your messaging, your content, even your earned placements need to adapt.
You’re not just optimizing for clicks anymore.
You’re optimizing for AI driven summaries.
How?
Publish clear, credible content in plain language (blog posts, one-pagers)
Use keywords and structure that LLMs pull from
Seed that content across coalition sites and earned media
You don’t just want to rank, you want to be the source the AI pulls from.
You’re not just influencing people anymore. You’re training the model.
This Isn’t Hype. It’s Infrastructure.
We don’t need another AI panel pretending automation is coming for your job.
What’s coming for your job is someone who uses AI better than you do.
As Wayne Gretzky said:
“Skate to where the puck is going.”
The stakes are only rising. Legislative cycles are accelerating. Digital ecosystems are more fractured. AI won’t just be a differentiator. It’ll be the standard. And the gap between fluent teams and fumbling ones? It’s widening fast.
The Takeaway
Stop worshipping or worse, fearing AI. Start using it to win.
Visibility isn’t about who yells the loudest.
It’s about who shows up smartest, fastest, and with precision.
If you’re not using AI to cut waste, see earlier, and act sharper,
you’re not rethinking anything.
You’re just wasting time and money better.
Watch the full webinar!
With Michael Beach (Cross Screen Media) and Brett Quick (Phronesis DC)
Read the full article
