The Issue Focus of Online and Television Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

Theories of campaign issue emphasis were developed in a pre-digital era. How well do these theories explain spending in the current era, when digital media allow for targeting of specific types of voters? In this research, we compare how the 2016 campaigns, both primary and general election, deployed television advertising with how they deployed online advertising. We suggest that, because online messages are targeted to specific viewer profiles much more than television messages, television ads should be more likely to discuss highly salient issues and valance issues than online ads. To test these ideas, we rely upon data from the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracked all televised political ads that aired in 2016, and our coding of data from Pathmatics, a company that tracks online advertising. We find, contrary to our expectations, that the predictors of issue discussion online and on television are largely similar.

Keywords

television advertising digital advertising campaigns

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ansolabehere

Iyengar

(1994). Riding the wave and claiming ownership over issues: The joint effects of advertising and news coverage in campaigns. Public Opinion Quarterly, 58, 335-357. doi:10.1086/269431

Arbour

(2014). Issue frame ownership: The partisan roots of campaign rhetoric. Political Communication, 31, 604-627. doi:10.1080/10584609.2013.852639

Ballard

A. O.

Hillygus

D. S.

Konitzer

(2016). Campaigning online: Web display ads in the 2012 presidential campaign. PS: Political Science & Politics, 49, 414-419. doi:10.1017/S1049096516000780

Barnard

Kreiss

(2013). A research agenda for online advertising: Surveying campaign practices, 2000-2012. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2046-2066.

Bimber

(2014). Digital media in the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012: Adaptation to the personalized political communication environment. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 11, 130-150. doi:10.1080/19331681.2014.895691

Bode

Lassen

D. S.

Kim

Y. M.

Shah

D. V.

Fowler

E. F.

Ridout

Franz

(2016). Coherent campaigns? Campaign broadcast and social messaging. Online Information Review, 40, 580-594.

Bossetta

(2018). The digital architectures of social media: Comparing political campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. election. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95, 471-496.

Dalmus

Hänggli

Bernhard

(2016). Issue competition between parties across communication channels: An empirical analysis of the 2011 Swiss federal elections (Presented at the NCCR Challenges to Democracy in the 21^st Century, Working Paper No. 93).

Fowler

E. F.

Franz

Ridout

(2016). Political advertising in the United States. Boulder, CO: Westview.

10.

Fowler

E. F.

Ridout

T. N.

Franz

M. M.

(2016). Political advertising in 2016: The presidential election as outlier? The Forum, 14, 445-469.

11.

Franz

(2013). Targeting campaign messages: Good for campaigns but bad for America? In Ridout

(Ed.), New directions in media and politics (pp. 113-131). New York, NY: Routledge.

12.

Green

Hobolt

S. B.

(2008). Owning the issue agenda: Party strategies and vote choices in British elections. Electoral Studies, 27, 460-476. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2008.02.003

13.

Haenschen

Jennings

(2019). Mobilizing millennial voters with targeted internet advertisements: A field experiment. Political Communication, 36, 357-375. doi:10.1080/10584609.2018.1548530

14.

Kaid

L. L.

Postelnicu

(2005). Political advertising in the 2004 election: Comparison of traditional television and internet messages. American Behavioral Scientist, 49, 265-278. doi:10.1177/0002764205279421

15.

Kang

Fowler

E. F.

Franz

M. M.

Ridout

T. N.

(2018). Issue consistency? Comparing television advertising, Tweets, and E-mail in the 2014 senate campaigns. Political Communication, 35, 32-49. doi:10.1080/10584609.2017.1334729

16.

Kaye

(2017, January 3). Data-driven targeting creates huge 2016 political ad shift: Broadcast TV down 20%, cable and digital way up. Retrieved from https://adage.com/article/media/2016-political-broadcast-tv-spend-20-cable-52/307346/

17.

Kelly

A. G.

(2011). Internet campaign strategies in the 2010 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Retrieved from https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-030811-171405/

18.

Klüver

Sagarzazu

(2016). Setting the agenda or responding to voters? Political parties, voters and issue attention. West European Politics, 39, 380-398. doi:10.1080/01402382.2015.1101295

19.

Klüver

Spoon

J. J.

(2015). Bringing salience back in: Explaining voting defection in the European Parliament. Party Politics, 21, 553-564.

20.

Kreiss

McGregor

S. C.

(2018). Technology firms shape political communication: The work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google with campaigns during the 2016 U.S. presidential cycle. Political Communication, 35, 155-177. doi:10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814

21.

Lapowsky

(2015, August 18). Political ad spending online is about to explode. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2015/08/digital-politcal-ads-2016/

22.

Lipsitz

(2013). Issue convergence is nothing more than issue convergence. Political Research Quarterly, 66, 843-855.

23.

Lovett

Peress

(2015). Targeting political advertising on television. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10, 391-432. doi:10.1561/100.00014107

24.

Mann

(2011). Daisy petals and mushroom clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the ad that changed American politics. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press.

25.

Milita

Ryan

J. B.

Simas

E. N.

(2014). Nothing to hide, nowhere to run, or nothing to lose: Candidate position-taking in congressional elections. Political Behavior, 36, 427-449. doi:10.1007/s11109-013-9235-3

26.

Petrocik

J. R.

(1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 case study. American Journal of Political Science, 40, 825-850.

27.

Puglisi

(2004). The spin doctor meets the rational voter: Electoral competition with agenda-setting effects. SSRN Electronic Journal. Advance online publication. doi:10.2139/ssrn.581881

28.

Ridout

T. N.

Franz

M. M.

Goldstein

K. M.

Feltus

W. J.

(2012). Separation by television program: Understanding the targeting of political advertising in presidential elections. Political Communication, 29, 1-23.

29.

Ridout

T. N.

Mellen

(2007). Does the media agenda reflect the Candidates’ agenda? Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 12, 44-62. doi:10.1177/1081180X07299799

30.

Roberts

(2013). A functional analysis comparison of web-only advertisements and traditional television advertisements from the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90, 23-38.

31.

Serazio

(2014). The new media designs of political consultants: Campaign production in a fragmented era. Journal of Communication, 64, 743-763. doi:10.1111/jcom.12078

32.

Sides

(2006). The origins of campaign agendas. British Journal of Political Science, 36, 407-436.

33.

Sides

(2007). The consequences of campaign agendas. American Politics Research, 35, 465-488.

34.

Spoon

J.-J.

Klüver

(2014). Do parties respond? How electoral context influences party responsiveness. Electoral Studies, 35, 48-60. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2014.04.014

35.

Stokes

D. E.

(1963). Spatial models of party competition. American Political Science Review, 57, 368-377. doi:10.2307/1952828

36.

Sulkin

Moriarty

C. M.

Hefner

(2007). Congressional candidates’ issue agendas on- and off-line. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 12, 63-79. doi:10.1177/1081180X07299802

37.

Sunstein

C. R.

(2009). Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

38.

Tresch

Lefevere

Walgrave

(2015). “Steal me if you can!” The impact of campaign messages on associative issue ownership. Party Politics, 21, 198-208. doi:10.1177/1354068812472576

39.

Tresch

Lefevere

Walgrave

(2018). How parties’ issue emphasis strategies vary across communication channels: The 2009 regional election campaign in Belgium. Acta Politica, 53, 25-47. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-016-0036-7

40.

Wagner

Meyer

T. M.

(2014). Which issues do parties emphasise? Salience strategies and party organisation in multiparty systems. West European Politics, 37, 1019-1045. doi:10.1080/01402382.2014.911483

41.

Wells

Shah

D. V.

Pevehouse

J. C.

Yang

Pelled

Boehm

Lukito

Ghosh

Schmidt

J. L.

(2016). How Trump drove coverage to the nomination: Hybrid media campaigning. Political Communication, 33, 669-676. doi:10.1080/10584609.2016.1224416

42.

Wesleyan Media Project. (2018, October 31). 61% increase in volume of negative ads. Retrieved from http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/103018/

43.

Williams

Gulati

J. J.

(2018). Digital advertising expenditures in the 2016 presidential election. Social Science Computer Review, 36, 406-421. doi:10.1177/0894439317726751

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.13 MB