Chapter 25 Exercises: Political Advertising: From TV Spots to Targeted Ads

These exercises develop analytical skills in advertising data interpretation, strategic resource allocation, and the critical evaluation of political advertising effectiveness research. They move from quantitative calculation to strategic analysis to ethical reflection.

Exercise 25.1: GRP Calculation and Media Market Strategy

Estimated time: 45 minutes | Difficulty: Introductory-Intermediate

Background

Understanding gross rating points is essential for evaluating campaign resource allocation decisions. This exercise develops practical facility with GRP math and media market strategy.

Data

A Senate campaign is planning its final four-week television advertising flight in a state with three significant media markets:

The campaign has a total television budget of $2.4 million for the final four weeks.

Tasks

Part A: The campaign manager proposes running 400 GRPs per week in each market for the full four weeks. Calculate the cost of this proposal. Is it within budget? If not, by how much does it exceed the budget?

Part B: Research on advertising effect decay suggests that advertising effects have a half-life of approximately one week. The campaign plans to stop advertising one week before election day (to redirect funds to GOTV). Given this decay rate, how much of the persuasive effect of week-one advertising do you expect to remain on election day? Show your calculation.

Part C: A strategist proposes concentrating the full $2.4M budget on the Metro market alone, arguing that it has the most persuadable voters. Calculate the maximum GRPs achievable in Metro-only for four weeks at $2,100/GRP. What reach and frequency assumptions would you need to evaluate whether this concentration strategy is superior to the distributed approach?

Part D: Develop your own allocation recommendation. Justify your allocation across all three markets with explicit reference to: the research literature on minimum effective frequency, decay effects, and the strategic situation in each market.

Exercise 25.2: Reading Ad Spending Data

Estimated time: 45 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate

Background

This exercise uses the structure of real political advertising datasets (modeled on Wesleyan Media Project data) to develop skills in advertising intelligence analysis.

Data

The following is a partial simulated Wesleyan-style dataset for the Garza-Whitfield Senate race at week 10:

Tasks

Part A: Calculate the total gross spending for each candidate-aligned camp (Whitfield campaign + Citizens for Public Safety vs. Garza campaign) over the full 10-week period. What is the spending ratio?

Part B: What percentage of total Whitfield-aligned airings are negative or contrast in tone? What percentage of Garza-aligned airings are negative or contrast? What does this tell you about each campaign's strategic approach?

Part C: Construct a summary showing the issue distribution of all advertising (by camp) weighted by airings. Which issues are each camp emphasizing? Do the emphases change between weeks 1-4 and weeks 9-10 for the Whitfield camp?

Part D: The Citizens for Public Safety PAC is running advertising that is consistently more negative in tone than the Whitfield campaign's own advertising. Based on the chapter's discussion of outside group strategy, explain why this division of labor might be strategically advantageous for Whitfield.

Part E: Write a 200-word "competitive advertising environment" memo, as if you were Nadia Osei presenting to the Garza campaign's senior team. Summarize the ad landscape and recommend one specific adjustment to the Garza campaign's advertising strategy.

Exercise 25.3: Message Testing Design

Estimated time: 60 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced

Background

This exercise asks you to design a message testing protocol for a specific campaign communication challenge.

Scenario

You are Nadia Osei's research director on the Garza campaign. The campaign has produced three potential 30-second spots responding to Whitfield's crime attack:

Spot A ("Context"): Features Garza explaining her prosecutorial record in detail, citing statistics showing crime declined in areas where her AG office focused resources, and describing specific cases where her prosecution decisions were vindicated.

Spot B ("Character"): Features three law enforcement officials (a police chief, a district attorney, and a victim's advocate) each briefly saying they trust Garza on public safety. Does not engage directly with Whitfield's specific claims.

Spot C ("Pivot"): Acknowledges crime concerns briefly, then pivots to healthcare costs as the dominant security concern facing most families. Frames economic security as the real safety issue. Does not respond to Whitfield's specific crime claims.

You have a budget of $35,000 for message testing and one week before the campaign needs to make a decision.

Tasks

Part A: Design an online survey experiment to test these three spots against a control condition. Specify: - Sample size and why you chose it - Primary outcomes you will measure and the exact survey items you will use - Randomization design (which respondents see which conditions) - Key subgroup analyses you will run and why

Part B: The chapter describes the limitations of online message testing relative to real-world advertising. For each of the three limitations discussed, explain how it specifically affects the inferences you can draw from your test of these three spots.

Part C: Your test results show the following for the primary persuasion outcome (favorable shift in vote intention toward Garza among target voter segments): - Spot A (Context): +2.1 percentage points (95% CI: +0.4 to +3.8) - Spot B (Character): +3.4 percentage points (95% CI: +1.9 to +4.9) - Spot C (Pivot): +1.2 percentage points (95% CI: −0.2 to +2.6)

Interpret these results. Which spot would you recommend, and why? What additional analysis would you want to do before making a final recommendation?

Part D: The campaign manager argues for Spot C despite its weaker performance in testing, reasoning that the pivot strategy is better for long-term message coherence and positioning. Write a 150-word response that takes the manager's argument seriously while presenting the testing evidence honestly.

Exercise 25.4: Micro-Targeting Ethics Analysis

Estimated time: 45 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced

Background

This exercise asks you to analyze the ethical dimensions of specific micro-targeting decisions.

Scenarios

For each of the following micro-targeting scenarios, assess the ethical status of the practice using the chapter's discussion of democratic accountability, privacy, and the "who gets counted" question. Rate each on a scale from "ethically unproblematic" to "ethically serious concern" and explain your rating.

Scenario 1: A campaign identifies registered Democrats with low turnout propensity scores and targets them with mobilization advertising emphasizing the importance of voting. Voters outside this segment do not see this advertising.

Scenario 2: A campaign identifies registered Republicans whose voter file records indicate they are likely Catholic, and targets them with advertising emphasizing the candidate's faith and shared values on specific issues. Non-Catholic voter segments see different advertising.

Scenario 3: A campaign identifies precincts with high concentrations of a racial minority group and specifically excludes those precincts from digital advertising targeting for all issue messages, because their modeled mobilization scores are low (unlikely to vote regardless of messaging).

Scenario 4: An outside group targets voters identified as likely opponent supporters with accurate but one-sided negative information about the other candidate, explicitly designed to reduce their enthusiasm for voting.

Scenario 5: A campaign runs different advertising to men and women in a specific suburban county—women see healthcare-focused messaging; men see economic-focused messaging—because internal research shows these are the highest-salience issues for each group.

Scenario 6: A campaign's digital advertising program excludes all Spanish-language dominant households from receiving digital advertising because the campaign's digital team does not have Spanish-language creative capabilities and does not want to serve English-only ads to voters who may not process them effectively.

Exercise 25.5: Interpreting the Effectiveness Literature

Estimated time: 45 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate

Tasks

Part A: The chapter discusses three major findings from field experimental research on advertising effectiveness: 1. Gerber et al.: Television advertising effects are real but decay rapidly (half-life ≈ one week) 2. Kalla and Broockman: Average persuasion effects are approximately zero in general elections 3. Green and colleagues: GOTV advertising effects are real but small (1-3 percentage points)

These findings appear to be in tension—how can advertising both have real effects (Gerber) and approximately zero average effects (Kalla-Broockman)? Write a 200-word reconciliation of these findings that resolves the apparent tension.

Part B: A political journalist writes: "According to recent research, political advertising is basically ineffective. Campaigns waste billions on ads that don't move voters." Evaluate this characterization using a nuanced reading of the experimental literature. What is the journalist getting right? What important qualifications is the journalist missing?

Part C: The chapter notes that Kalla and Broockman's near-zero average effect encompasses variation across contexts. Identify three specific variables that the chapter suggests moderate advertising effectiveness—that is, conditions under which advertising effects are likely to be larger than average. For each, explain the mechanism.

Part D: You are advising a down-ballot candidate (state legislature) with a $200,000 budget in a district of 45,000 registered voters. Given the effectiveness literature, how would you allocate the budget across: television advertising, digital advertising, direct mail, and canvassing/field? Defend your allocation with specific reference to the research evidence.