Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Article
  • Cited by 2

  • Access

Political Advertising Online and Offline

  • ERIKA FRANKLIN FOWLER (a1), MICHAEL M. FRANZ (a2), GREGORY J. MARTIN (a3), ZACHARY PESKOWITZ (a4) and TRAVIS N. RIDOUT (a5)...

Abstract

Despite the rapid growth of online political advertising, the vast majority of scholarship on political advertising relies exclusively on evidence from candidates’ television advertisements. The relatively low cost of creating and deploying online advertisements and the ability to target online advertisements more precisely may broaden the set of candidates who advertise and allow candidates to craft messages to more narrow audiences than on television. Drawing on data from the newly released Facebook Ad Library API and television data from the Wesleyan Media Project, we find that a much broader set of candidates advertises on Facebook than television, particularly in down-ballot races. We then examine within-candidate variation in the strategic use and content of advertising on television relative to Facebook for all federal, statewide, and state legislative candidates in the 2018 election. Among candidates who use both advertising media, Facebook advertising occurs earlier in the campaign, is less negative, less issue focused, and more partisan than television advertising.

  • View HTML

      • Send article to Kindle

      To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

      Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

      Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

      Political Advertising Online and Offline
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Dropbox

      To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

      Political Advertising Online and Offline
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Google Drive

      To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

      Political Advertising Online and Offline
      Available formats
      ×

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Corresponding author

Erika Franklin Fowler, Professor of Government, Department of Government, Wesleyan University, efowler@wesleyan.edu.
Michael M. Franz, Professor of Government and Legal Studies, Department of Government, Bowdoin College, mfranz@bowdoin.edu.
Gregory J. Martin, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, gjmartin@stanford.edu.
Zachary Peskowitz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Emory University, zachary.f.peskowitz@emory.edu.
Travis N. Ridout, Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy, School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Washington State University, tnridout@wsu.edu.

Footnotes

Hide All

Except where noted in the text, analyses presented were preregistered (https://osf.io/3px5b) prior to the release of the Facebook Ad Library. We are grateful to Laura Baum, Dolly Haddad, Colleen Bogucki, Mason Jiang, and the numerous undergraduates across our institutions for their efforts on this project. We thank Amanda Wintersieck, Devra Moehler, Abby Wood, and seminar participants at APSA, the Princeton CSDP American Politics seminar, the University of Maryland, the University of Wisconsin, the Wesleyan Media Project 2018 Post-Election Conference, and Yale for comments on previous versions. The Wesleyan Media Project acknowledges funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Wesleyan University for 2018. All views and errors are our own. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IR9XGC

Footnotes

References

Hide All
Aldrich, John H., Carson, Jamie L., Gomez, Brad T., and Rohde, David W.. 2019. Change and Continuity in the 2016 and 2018 Elections. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Ali, Muhammad, Sapiezynski, Piotr, Bogen, Miranda, Korolova, Aleksandra, Mislove, Alan, and Rieke, Aaron. 2019. “Discrimination through Optimization: How Facebook’s Ad Delivery Can Lead To Biased Outcomes.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3: Article 199.
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Iyengar, Shanto. 1996. Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: Free Press.
Anstead, Nick, Magalhães, João Carlos, Stupart, Richard, and Tambini, Damian. 2018. “Political Advertising on Facebook: The Case of the 2017 United Kingdom General Election.” London School of Economics, Working Paper. https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/71b9e776-0ea8-4bf3-943e-d25fa26898b8.pdf.
Ballard, Andrew O., Hillygus, D. Sunshine, and Konitzer, Tobias. 2016. “Campaigning Online: Web Display Ads in the 2012 Presidential Campaign.” PS: Political Science & Politics 49 (3): 414–419.
Barber, Benjamin R. 2001. “The Uncertainty of Digital Politics: Democracy’s Uneasy Relationship with Information Technology.” Harvard International Review 23 (1): 42–47.
Bimber, Bruce, and Davis, Richard. 2003. Campaigning Online: The Internet in US Elections. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bode, Leticia, Lassen, David S., Kim, Young Mie, Shah, Dhavan V., Fowler, Erika Franklin, Ridout, Travis, and Franz, Michael. 2016. “Coherent Campaigns? Campaign Broadcast and Social Messaging.” Online Information Review 40 (5): 580–594.
Bonica, Adam. 2013. Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections: Public version 2.0. [Computer file]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Libraries. http://data.stanford.edu/dime.
Bonica, Adam. 2014. “Mapping the Ideological Marketplace.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (2): 367–386.
Broockman, David E., and Green, Donald P.. 2014. Do Online Advertisements Increase Political Candidate’s Name Recognition or Favorability? Evidence from Randomized Field Experiments. Political Behavior 36 (2): 263–289.
Bruell, Alexandra. 2018. “NBCU Joins ‘OpenAp’ Tv Ad Consortium, Licenses Data Assets.” Wall Street Journal, April 19. Accessed April 4, 2018.
Dowling, Conor M., and Wichowsky, Amber. 2015. “Attacks without Consequences? Candidates, Parties, Groups, and the Changing Face of Negative Advertising.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 19–36.
Druckman, James N., Kifer, Martin J., and Parkin, Michael. 2009. “Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections.” American Political Science Review 103 (3): 343–366.
Dunaway, Johanna, Searles, Kathleen, Sui, Mingxiao, and Paul, Newly. 2018. “News Attention in a Mobile Era.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 23 (2): 107–124.
Edelson, Laura, Sakhuja, Shikhar, Dey, Ratan, and McCoy, Damon. 2019. “An Analysis of United States Online Political Advertising Transparency.” Working Paper, NYU.
Egkolfopoulou, Misyrlena. 2019. “Facebook Is Big Winner in Democrats’ 2020 Presidential Debates.” Bloomberg, July 22, 2017. Accessed August 5, 2019.
Ferejohn, John. 1986. “Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control.” Public Choice 50: 5–25.
Fowler, Erika Franklin, Franz, Michael M., and Ridout, Travis N.. 2016. Political Advertising in the United States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Franz, Michael M., Franklin Fowler, Erika, Ridout, Travis, and Wang, Meredith Yiran. 2019. “The Issue Focus of Online and Television Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Campaign.” American Politics Research 48 (1): 175–196.
Freedman, Paul, and Goldstein, Ken. 1999. “Measuring Media Exposure and the Effects of Negative Campaign Ads.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (4): 1189–1208.
Gainous, Jason, and Wagner, Kevin M.. 2011. Rebooting American Politics: The Internet Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gainous, Jason, and Wagner, Kevin M.. 2014. Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Geer, John Gray. 2006. In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gentzkow, Matthew, Shapiro, Jesse M., and Taddy, Matt. 2019. “Measuring Group Differences in High-Dimensional Choices: Method and Application to Congressional Speech.” Econometrica 87 (4): 1307–1340.
Gerber, Alan S., Gimpel, James G., Green, Donald P., and Shaw, Daron R.. 2011. “How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment.” American Political Science Review 105 (1): 135–150.
Gibson, Rachel K., Margolis, Michael, Resnick, David, and Ward, Stephen J.. 2003. “Election Campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK: A Comparative Analysis.” Party Politics 9 (1): 47–75.
Goldstein, Ken, and Freedman, Paul. 2000. “New Evidence for New Arguments: Money and Advertising in the 1996 Senate Elections.” Journal of Politics 62 (4): 1087–1108.
Goldstein, Ken, and Freedman, Paul. 2002a. “Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect.” Journal of Politics 64 (3): 721–740.
Goldstein, Ken, and Freedman, Paul. 2002b. “Lessons Learned: Campaign Advertising in the 2000 Elections.” Political Communication 19 (1): 5–28.
Hassell, Hans J. G., and Monson, J. Quin. 2014. “Campaign Targets and Messages in Direct Mail Fundraising.” Political Behavior 36 (2): 359–376.
Henderson, John. 2019. “Issue Distancing in Congressional Elections.” Working Paper, Yale University.
Hindman, Matthew. 2008. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Kenney, Patrick J.. 1999. “Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship between Negativity and Participation.” American Political Science Review 93 (4): 877–889.
Kang, Taewoo, Fowler, Erika Franklin, Franz, Michael M., and Ridout, Travis N.. 2018. “Issue Consistency? Comparing Television Advertising, Tweets, and E-Mail in the 2014 Senate Campaigns.” Political Communication 35 (1): 32–49.
Krasno, Jonathan S., and Green, Donald P.. 2008. “Do Televised Presidential Ads Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence from a Natural Experiment.” Journal of Politics 70 (1): 245–261.
Krupnikov, Yanna. 2011. “When Does Negativity Demobilize? Tracing the Conditional Effect of Negative.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (4): 797–813.
Lau, Richard R., Sigelman, Lee, and Rovner, Ivy Brown. 2007. “The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment.” Journal of Politics 69 (4): 1176–1209.
Lelkes, Yphtach, Sood, Gaurav, and Iyengar, Shanto. 2017. “The Hostile Audience: The Effect of Access to Broadband Internet on Partisan Affect.” American Journal of Political Science 61 (1): 5–20.
Lovett, Mitchell, and Peress, Michael. 2015. “Targeting Political Advertising on Television.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10 (3): 391–432.
Martin, Gregory J., and Peskowitz, Zachary. 2018. “Agency Problems in Political Campaigns: Media Buying and Consulting.” American Political Science Review 112 (2): 231–248.
Neiheisel, Jacob, and Niebler, Sarah. 2013. “The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 38 (3): 377–403.
Nicas, Jack. 2018. “Facebook to Require Verified Identities for Future Political Ads.” New York Times, April 4, 2018. Accessed April 6, 2018.
Plasser, Fritz, and Plasser, Gunda. 2002. Global Political Campaigning: A Worldwide Analysis of Campaign Professionals and Their Practices. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Prior, Markus. 2006. “The Incumbent in the Living Room: The Rise of Television and the Incumbency Advantage in U.S. House Elections.” Journal of Politics 68 (3): 657–673.
Roberts, Chris. 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 (1): 23–38.
Roese, Neal J., and Sande, Gerald N.. 1993. “Backlash Effects in Attack Politics.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 23 (8): 632–653.
Sides, John, and Vavreck, Lynn. 2013. The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Snyder, James M. Jr., and Strömberg, David. 2010. “Press Coverage and Political Accountability.” Journal of Political Economy 118 (2): 355–408.
Stromer-Galley, Jennifer. 2014. Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sulkin, Tracy. 2011. The Legislative Legacy of Congressional Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Urban, Carly, and Niebler, Sarah. 2014. “Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?” American Journal of Political Science 58: 322–336.
Wood, Abby K., and Ravel, Ann M.. 2018. “Fool Me Once: Regulating Fake News and Other Online Political Advertising.” Southern California Law Review 91 (6): 1223–1278.
Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite. 2019. Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Type Description Title
UNKNOWN
Supplementary materials

Fowler et al. Dataset
Dataset

 Unknown
PDF
Supplementary materials

Fowler et al. supplementary material
Online Appendix

 PDF (3.2 MB)
3.2 MB
  • Cited by 2

  • Access

Political Advertising Online and Offline

  • ERIKA FRANKLIN FOWLER (a1), MICHAEL M. FRANZ (a2), GREGORY J. MARTIN (a3), ZACHARY PESKOWITZ (a4) and TRAVIS N. RIDOUT (a5)...

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between <date>. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.