June Executive Vice President’s message

July 14, 2022

It’s no secret Washington has a housing shortage. In fact, we’re 268,988 housing units below what is needed for our population as of 2020, which means Washington state now ranks last in the country for housing units per household. Over 85% of Washingtonians cannot qualify for a mortgage to purchase a median-priced home and millennials are among the hardest hit.

Helping to change the tide

BIAW’s Cut the Costs campaign is designed to help millennials understand the hidden costs of housing policy and how they can make a difference. We launched this digital advertising campaign in early April to specifically reach this age demographic on the websites and social media platforms they use.

Digital advertising: Why are we using it?

We’re using a combination of digital ads—display ads, search ads, video ads and social media ads—to reach millennials who want to buy a home, but can’t find one they can afford. These ads appear across the Internet, on social media feeds, in search engine results and on websites they visit.

BIAW chose digital advertising because it helps us target specific demographics and interest areas. This highly accountable form of advertising allows us to track the audience across various platforms and tie ad effectiveness to real-world results. If our ads don’t meet our goals, we can quickly pivot and replace them with new, more compelling content.

Our message and strategy

We are working to educate and inform millennial potential homeowners about the increased costs that permit delays, unnecessary regulations and unreasonable zoning policies place on building new homes. We are helping them see how the decisions made by policymakers over the last several decades, continuing into today, have resulted in roadblocks to homeownership for their generation.

The target audience receives a combination of educational videos, featuring our own millennial-era government affairs staff, and commercial-style videos about the hidden costs and building limitations behind the housing crisis. Then they see static display ads on relevant websites to attract traffic to the CutTheCosts.org landing page. Finally, they see our messaging in internet searches on housing prices and other related topics.

Success to date

As of June 15, we’ve had more than 5.5 million impressions of our ads and more than 1.48 million views of our videos. Nearly 25,000 people have visited our CutTheCosts.org landing page to learn more and hundreds of them have joined our mailing list.

We will continue to build awareness and develop relationships moving forward so we can help them make informed decisions at the ballot box this fall. We want every generation to enjoy the American Dream of owning a home.