The flood of negative ads during the 2012 election cycle, along with the impact of Hurricane Sandy, led many brands to hunker down and cut back on TV advertising, MarketShare executive Pat LaPointe says. A better strategy, however, was to switch some of the unused TV budget to targeted digital campaigns, LaPointe says. "This allowed them to continue to engage those people who were still in consumption mode vs. those who were largely in survival mode," he explains.