The smarter political operatives are coming to understand the many limitations of TV advertising. One of the problems is that whatever persuasive effects the advertising has will decay quickly; within a few weeks at most, it will be as though you never aired your ads at all. And with news and information about the campaign coming from so many different directions, TV ads have a harder time cutting through the noise. Dollar for dollar, it seems a much better investment to put money into more personal forms of communication.
Yet campaigns, and especially super PACs, continue to spend millions of dollars on television. Why is that? There are a number of reasons. One is that if their opponents are doing it, they feel they have to match them, lest they let their voice be drowned out. They also know that TV remains the most-used medium for news and entertainment, so you can reach more people there than in any other medium. Another reason is that the people who run campaigns have been doing it this way for a long time, and that’s part of the strategy they know and understand. There are also financial considerations involved, since the networks of consultants who run campaigns tend to scratch each other’s backs. If I’m a consultant running one candidate’s race, I hire my buddy the media consultant and my other buddy the pollster, knowing that soon enough they’ll do the same for me.
TV ads also provide something concrete the super PACs can present to their billionaire benefactors, to say, “This is what your contributions paid for.” It’s much more compelling to show that billionaire a fancy TV spot starring the candidate and tell him that everyone in the state will see it a dozen times, than to show him a dusty office in a strip mall where volunteers are making phone calls, even if the latter might yield more bang for his buck.
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