New Ways of Evaluating Campaign Ads

The 2012 elections are already featuring a broad array of candidate, party, and Super PAC advertising, as well as a large mix of campaign messages and tones. But how effective are these ads proving? What do they convey about the candidates and issues, and are they successful in getting messages across? Is the current crop of ads fair or misleading? And in the era of Super PAC dollars, how much impact will campaign advertising and messaging have in the 2012 election cycle?

On July 23, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted a discussion on the efficacy of the new wave of campaign advertising. Researchers with Vanderbilt University and YouGov’s Ad Rating Project presented new data examining voter responses to current presidential campaign ads and discussed how this survey approach can inform civic debate and voter decision-making. The Ad Rating Project measures reactions of a nationally representative sample of voters, offering a new and systematic way to assess ads during the presidential campaign.