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Watching US Presidential Election Ads Should Come With Their Own Health Warning

Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, discusses the company’s latest research, which shows that an average ad for soap, ketchup or toilet cleaner are more likely to inspire or make people feel hopeful than ad campaigns from the two candidates bidding to become the next so-called “Leader of the Free World”.

Ian Forrester

Ian Forrester

4 Oct 2024

Would you willingly watch something you know will make you twice as angry as watching the average ad?

Of course, you wouldn’t. Even as people who work in the industry, we recognise that while there are some undoubted gems of great work being produced every month, a lot of ads produced these days are dull or annoying (or both). 

So, faced with the enviable choice of watching something that is almost guaranteed to make your blood boil, I think most of us would probably pass.  Yet, this is exactly what is being served up to voters at this year’s US Presidential Election. 

Let me explain. Here at DAIVID, we were interested to know how the ad content created by both Presidential candidates – Donald Trump and Kamala Harris – is performing and how it compares with the industry average.

So we ran some research. We used our advanced creative testing technology to measure the emotional responses and attention levels of 1,232 nationally representative US viewers to content created in support of the two candidates to become the next US president across YouTube, TikTok, X and Instagram. 

What we found shouldn’t have surprised me, but it kind of did.

 

Twice the levels of anger and disgust

The average video from this year’s US Presidential Election is 139% more likely to make you feel angry than the average US ad and twice as likely to make you feel disgusted. They are also 49% more likely to make you feel scared, 32% more likely to make you feel anxious and 23% less likely to be trusted than the average commercial campaign. 

Of course, political ads tend to be on the negative side. After all, reminding people of the negative consequences of NOT doing anything can be a powerful driver for action. But then a political candidate should at least provide some kind of positive vision of the future too.

However, positive emotions are also pretty thin on the ground this election. When you compare it to the Adland average, this year’s US Presidential ad campaigns are 7% less likely to make people feel hopeful, 5% less likely to inspire and 15% less likely to make viewers feel admiration. 

That means on average the campaigns promoting the two people bidding to become the next so-called “Leader of the Free World” are less likely to make people feel hopeful or inspired than the average ad for soap, tomato ketchup or toilet cleaner. 

In fact, our data shows that on average this year’s US Presidential ad campaigns from both candidates are almost 10% less likely to make you feel intense feelings of positivity than the US norm and 33% more likely to make you feel intense negative emotions

 

I Don’t Understand

Just to give you one example of what we are talking about, try watching this ad, titled “I Don’t Understand”, posted on the Donald J Trump YouTube account back in July. Spoiler alert: it should probably come with its own health warning.

More than half (50.7%) who watched the video – which criticises Presidential rival Kamala Harris for her immigration policies and her approach to the southern border – had an intense negative response to the content – 85% higher than the average US ad. This includes the highest levels of fear, anger, anxiety, disgust and sadness of any video we tested in the study (and possibly we have ever tested).

That’s quite a reaction. It sounds more like the response of cinema-goers to a film about a world recovering from an apocalyptic event than someone trying to convince them to vote for them. It’s almost as bad as I felt after watching the last episode of Game of Thrones (don’t get me started).

 

The Power of Positivity

Now, I may be being slightly harsh, but the reason I mention it is to show just how valuable a bit more positivity can be. As I mentioned before, both campaigns are slightly less likely to generate positive emotions than a typical US ad, and much more likely to make us feel intense negative emotions. That in turn has had an impact on the levels of engagement generated by both Presidential campaigns. 

Both Harris and Trump’s ad on average attract 6.1% less attention than the industry norm and are also less likely to inspire people to share or recommend the video with their social networks. However, there are clear signs that more focus on generating positive emotions would help to make the impact of their ad campaigns much more powerful.

For example, back in July, ads launched by the Harris campaign were more likely to elicit intense positive emotions from viewers than those created by the Trump campaign, which were more likely to attract negative feelings. This includes stronger feelings of trust (+3.7 percent), admiration (+18.7 percent), amusement (10 percent) and hope (+20.5 percent). 

This meant that ads from the Democrat nominee were also more likely to attract higher levels of attention and also a higher proportion of viewers willing to share or recommend the content.

Fast forward to September, and the positions have been reversed. A slightly different approach by the Republican campaigns has seen an 8.4% increase in positive feelings generated by Trump’s campaign ads from July compared to Harris’ 4.7%.

This in turn has resulted in Trump’s ads increasing the amount of attention they generate by 5.9%, putting them ahead of the Harris campaign, which only managed a 2.6% increase. Viewers were also more likely to recommend, search or share Trump’s videos. 

This shows, just like commercial campaigns, that there is a clear correlation between the intensity of positive emotions elicited by political content and the likelihood that people watching will be more engaged and willing to act.

Conclusion

Conclusion

In an election that has done much to divide families, communities and the country, let’s hope this is something that both camps can take onboard. Although with just over a month to go, they are really running out of time.  

Certainly, our data shows that by making more of a positive pitch to the nation, either of the two candidates could improve the efficacy of their digital ad strategies

But then, the stakes seem much higher at this election. While the repercussions of the rhetoric and language used by either candidate could be felt way beyond November 5.

More focus on what they would do to fix the country’s issues rather than how bad the other candidate is – particularly for Harris, who many US voters still feel like they don’t know – would help to boost overall engagement among voters increasingly jaded with the divisive nature of US politics.

Because let’s face it, the last thing we need is more things to get angry about.