Minds Are Already Made Up – No Changes Expected

 

Millions, no billions, of dollars are pouring into media of all sorts with a hope that a good campaign will deliver that November 2020 margin of victory candidates need against their opponents. As Russians deploy their Trump-flavored malware, as each party desperately solicits contributions, touting the efforts of their other party, as campaigning candidates desperately attempt to rise above the clutter, there is a real question as to the efficacy of these efforts. Perhaps the sheer volume of ad campaigns has a much greater impact than the messages they convey. Are such ads a colossal waste of money? They do help fill the gap in lost ad revenue from commercial sponsors impacted by the drop in consumer spending due to the pandemic, but that’s a benefit for media companies.

If the metrics of a significant university study on the power of these political ads are correct, there’s real question as to whether or not such marketing efforts are worth the cost. The study: The small effects of political advertising are small regardless of context, message, sender, or receiver: Evidence from 59 real-time randomized experiments by Alexander Coppock (Department of Political Science, Yale University), Seth Hill (Department of Political Science, UC San Diego), and Lynn Vavreck (Department of Political Science, UCLA) published in ScienceAdvances, September 2^nd.  Here’s the abstract:

Evidence across social science indicates that average effects of persuasive messages are small. One commonly offered explanation for these small effects is heterogeneity: Persuasion may only work well in specific circumstances. To evaluate heterogeneity, we repeated an experiment weekly in real time using 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign advertisements. We tested 49 political advertisements in 59 unique experiments on 34,000 people. We investigate heterogeneous effects by sender (candidates or groups), receiver (subject partisanship), content (attack or promotional), and context (battleground versus non-battleground, primary versus general election, and early versus late). We find small average effects on candidate favorability and vote. These small effects, however, do not mask substantial heterogeneity even where theory from political science suggests that we should find it. During the primary and general election, in battleground states, for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, effects are similarly small. Heterogeneity with large offsetting effects is not the source of small average effects.

In short, as a general rule people are not persuaded by the messages in political ads. The above study found there is an impact, but it is not what folks think. “The summary finding from our study is that, at least in hard-fought campaigns for the presidency, substantial heterogeneities in the size of treatment effects are not hiding behind small average effects. Attack and promotional advertisements appear to work similarly well. Effects are not substantially different depending on which campaign produced the advertisements or in what electoral context they were presented. Subjects living in different states or who hold different partisan attachments appear to respond to the advertisements by similar degrees.” Are just overthinking our cleverness? Or maybe in tight elections, even that small difference just might be determinative:

“First, the marginal effect of advertising is small but detectable; thus, candidates and campaigns may not be wrong to allocate scarce resources to television advertising because, in a close election, these small effects could be the difference between winning and losing. Second, the expensive efforts to target or tailor advertisements to specific audiences require careful consideration. The evidence from our study shows that the effectiveness of advertisements does not vary greatly from person to person or from advertisement to advertisement.” The study.

One of the study’s authors, Alexander Coppock, had this comment to his study: “‘There’s an idea that a really good ad, or one delivered in just the right context to a targeted audience, can influence voters, but we found that political ads have consistently small persuasive effects across a range of characteristics,’ said Coppock, an assistant professor of political science in the [Yale] Faculty of Arts and Sciences. ‘Positive ads work no better than attack ads. Republicans, Democrats, and independents respond to ads similarly. Ads aired in battleground states aren’t substantially more effective than those broadcast in non-swing states.’” YaleNews, September 2^nd, which continues:

“The researchers selected ads using real-time, ad-buy data and news coverage of each week’s most important ads. They tested ads attacking or promoting Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as well as commercials concerning primary candidates, such as Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Bernie Sanders. They analyzed the ads’ effects on survey respondents across several variables, including the candidate, party, or political action committee that sponsored them; whether they were positive or negative in tone; the partisanship of those viewing the ads; the time to Election Day when they aired; whether they were viewed in a battleground state or not; and whether they aired during the primary or general election. 

“They found that, on average and across all variables, the ads moved a candidate’s favorability rating among respondents only .05 of a point on the survey’s five-point scale, which is small but statistically significant given the study’s large size, note the researchers. The ads’ effect on whom individuals intended to vote for was smaller still — a statistically insignificant 0.007 of a percentage point. 

“Campaigns should carefully consider efforts to tailor advertisements to specific audiences given that the evidence shows that ads’ persuasive effects vary little from person to person or from commercial to commercial, the researchers concluded… The findings do not demonstrate that political advertising is always ineffective, Coppock said, noting that the study didn’t analyze the influence of an entire advertising campaign…  ‘TV ads help candidates increase their name recognition among the public, which is extremely important,’ said Coppock, a resident fellow at Yale’s Institution for Social Policy Studies and the Center for the Study of American Politics. ‘Moreover, the effects we demonstrated were small but detectable and could make the difference between winning and losing a close election.’”  

The dollar flow of money for this 2020 effort is staggering. The September 3^rd Forbes presents various expert analyses on the aggregate expected costs: “Kantar Media CMAG group estimates that political ads for the 2020 election could reach $6 billion. Group M, a prominent ad agency, estimates spending for political ads will reach $10 billion, an increase of 59% from the 2016 election year when an estimated $6.3 billion was  spent.

“BIA Advisory Service estimates $6.55 billion will be spent on local political advertising in 2020, with over-the-air TV receiving the largest share of $3.08 billion – 47% of total political spend in 2020. This represents a potential 16.5% of total local broadcast TV advertising revenue for 2020. Digital media is forecast for 21% of political ads, cable TV 14% and radio nearly 5%.

“Cross Screen Media and Advertising Analytics estimates the video ad market for politics will grow by 50% from 2018 to 2020, reaching a projected $6 billion. The study estimates political advertising will account for 4-5% of the total video ad dollars and account for 17% of total growth. Local broadcast TV is expected to get a lion share of the political ad dollars with stronger ad growth from digital media and local cable.” Whew!

We are unlikely to see any significant reduction in campaign spending. Which candidate is willing to take the leap of faith and say, “Hey, I can win without that”? What’s more, the sheer volume of ads suggests a tsunami of power and support, regardless of the message. Name recognition alone, particularly in local races where challengers are rising to attack incumbents, might be worth the effort. But for those big races, actual events – obvious successes and failures – seem to have more of an impact than political ads about either. And for diehards in each major party, the die appears to be cast.

              I’m Peter Dekom, the political soil all around us appears to be pockmarked by the indentation of well-dug-in heels.