Public perceptions of television and online political advertising

Abstract

For decades, television has dominated political advertising, but that is changing due to the rise of advertising online and on social and digital media. How do people view online political advertising and how does this compare to their views of television advertising? To address these questions, we examine a nationally representative survey of 1200 U.S. adults that was fielded in February 2021. The survey contains an experiment in which the description of advertising (generic, television, or online) is altered. We find, in general, that people view online advertising more favorably than television advertising. We also find that, in some instances, age influences views of advertising. This study provides some of the first evidence of how Americans view online political advertising. Understanding what people think about online advertising can shed light on the potential impacts of online ad exposure, such as persuasion and participation, and people’s attitudes toward online advertising should inform proposals for its regulation.

Keywords

Online public advertising televised political advertising public opinion

For the past half century, television has dominated political advertising in the United States, but that is changing. The percentage of political ad spending on digital increased from less than 1% in the 2009–2010 election cycle to about 20% in the 2017–2018 election cycle (Fowler et al., 2021). During the 2020 presidential general election, $435 million was spent on digital political advertising, which was just under a quarter of total ad spending in that race (Ridout et al., 2021).

The rapid growth of online political advertising raises questions about how audiences view political advertising overall and online advertising relative to widely decried television advertising. Is online advertising viewed more favorably than traditional television advertising? Or do negative views of online spaces—72% of Americans believe that social media companies have too much power in politics today, and 64% believe that the effect of social media companies is mostly negative (Auxier, 2020)—transfer over to online political ads? Alternatively, do people view online ads and television ads as parts of a political advertising whole, making no distinctions between the two?

To assess Americans’ views of television and online political advertising, we examine a survey of 1200 U.S. adults that was fielded in February 2021. The survey contains an experiment in which participants are primed to think of televised political advertising, online political advertising, or political advertising generically. We find, despite public concerns about social media companies, that people generally view online advertising more favorably than television advertising. This is an important finding. That the public does not view online advertising in an entirely negative light—a fact that in itself could affect what the public learns from online advertising and how effective it is—should, at the very least, inform proposals to regulate online advertising. We return to this point in the conclusion.

Views of advertising

The little evidence that exists suggests that people’s views of political advertising are mixed at best. A survey from 1998 asked Americans how much “political ads on TV” bothered them. Thirty-two percent were bothered “very much,” and another 24% said they were bothered “somewhat” (Pew, 1998). Jin et al. (2009) also found views of political advertising as measured in a survey to be, on the whole, negative.

More evidence suggests that people do not like negative campaigning in general—and negative advertising more specifically. In the 1980s, about three-quarters of Americans reported that they disapproved of negative political commercials (Garramone, 1984), and a survey from 2000 found that 77% of Americans were bothered at least somewhat by negative campaigning (Pew, 2000). Yet, given when the studies were conducted, reported views of political advertising were likely driven by people’s views of political advertising on television.

At first blush, one might expect that people would view online advertising unfavorably. Campaigns use incivility and misinformation in their communications on social media (Chen and Wang, 2022; Heseltine and Dorsey, 2022), and people frequently encounter incivility, misinformation, outrage, and derogatory language in political discussions online (Coe et al., 2014; Ruiz et al., 2011). Americans’ dissatisfactions with social media’s perceived facilitation of the spread of misinformation, hatred, harassment, and extremism (Auxier, 2020) may lead them to disapprove of online political advertising.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that people might view online political advertising more favorably than televised political advertising. First, online political advertising is typically more positive than televised political advertising (Fowler et al., 2021), and the public dislikes negative political commercials (Garramone, 1984; Pinkleton, 1997). If negativity is less prevalent in online political advertising, it may be viewed less unfavorably than televised political advertising.

A second reason online advertising may be viewed more favorably is that online political advertising may be less intrusive. People generally view advertisements more favorably when they are less intrusive, which Ha (1996) defines as “the degree to which advertisements in a media vehicle interrupt the flow of an editorial unit.” Grusell and Nord (2010) write: “Well-received advertising could be described as being viewed as a matter of personal choice, while dispreferred advertising can be described as being forced upon us by the mass media in general. We like advertising when we feel we have chosen to be exposed to it, but dislike it when it interferes with our primary mass media usage” (p. 98). Perceived intrusiveness can lead people to feel irritated and to avoid advertising (Edwards et al., 2002).

Indeed, perceptions of advertising have been shown to vary considerably across channels, which vary in their levels of intrusiveness. A Swedish survey from 2005—by which time online advertising had become fairly widespread—found that 9% of people held negative attitudes toward newspaper advertising compared to 81% of people holding negative views of advertising by text messaging (Grusell, 2007). Importantly, television commercials were viewed less favorably than advertising on the Internet, with 62% of people holding negative views toward the former and 47% holding negative views toward the latter.

Why might television ads be seen by audiences as more intrusive? First, “the interspersing of advertisements within [television] programming is interruptive and disturbing by nature” (Zanot 1984: 12). Second, television ads are longer than online ads. The median length of a video ad in 2020 was 30 s on television, about 20 s on Facebook, and 15 s on YouTube (Fowler, Franz and Ridout, 2021). Third, most ads online are skippable—one can easily swipe away from the ad or click a button after 5 s to skip. On television, one can turn the channel, but doing so does not make the content you want to see arrive any sooner, and thus television ads are more likely to take away from the enjoyment of a program. Fourth, television ads are more likely to pack an emotional punch. Zanot (1984: 12), in comparing television with print advertising, notes that television “assaults more of the senses,” making it “more difficult to ‘tune out’ unwanted messages.” In sum, there are several reasons to believe that viewers find television ads more intrusive than online ads.

One caveat is that online ads can be more narrowly targeted than television ads—and sometimes even individually targeted. Gironda and Korgaonkar (2018) suggest that consumers are not yet comfortable with personalized advertising, given “the immense levels of tracking, data collection, and selling of consumer information that takes place” (p. 64). At the same time, though, it may not be clear to online users that the political ads they see online are, in fact, targeted to them on the basis of past behaviors or known interests. In addition, targeted ads that provide useful information can reduce people’s perceptions of intrusiveness (Ying et al., 2009). In short, while targeting concerns are no doubt present with online advertising, we suggest that television advertising may still be viewed less favorably due to its greater use of negativity and differences in format that make it seem more intrusive.

While our study focuses on differences in the ways Americans think about political advertising on television and online, those perceptions may also vary depending on the receiver’s age. Younger people were raised during an era in which the use of social media was increasingly common in politics, while their older counterparts grew up during a time when television campaigning predominated. Research suggests that there may be a relationship between a person’s age and views of television and online advertising. Many studies find that older Americans express more negative attitudes toward advertising (cf. Jin et al., 2009). And in the realm of political advertising, Garramone (1984) finds that older people perceive political ads as less truthful than younger people do, and they are less approving of negative advertising than younger people. Younger individuals also hold more favorable attitudes toward traditional advertising (Shavitt et al., 1998). Studies also suggest that older individuals are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward online/mobile ads (Ahlluwalia and Singh, 2020) and toward targeted political ads (Dobber et al., 2019) than are younger people.

The reasoning connecting an individual’s age and attitudes toward advertising is not made explicit in these studies, but there are at least three reasons to believe that older Americans hold more negative attitudes toward political advertising. First, older Americans watch more television (Krantz-Kent, 2018), and because they grew up during a time in which television dominated, likely remember being annoyed by political ads while watching their favorite television programs. Second, older Americans may also have more negative experiences with political ads online because political ads are abundant on Facebook, which is now used more heavily by older people (Sweney, 2018), whereas political advertising is prohibited on some social media platforms that are popular among younger Americans (e.g., TikTok). Third, even when presented with the same political ads online, younger Americans may be more skillful in “dealing with” those online ads because they are “digital natives” with extensive experience in navigating online environments. In short, we expect that older Americans will report more negative attitudes toward political advertising than younger Americans.

Data

Our primary data come from a survey that was fielded by YouGov from February 19–23, 2021. The dataset contains a sample of 1200 U.S. adults, matched to the 2018 American Community survey on gender, age, race, and education (see Appendix A for details). This survey was deemed exempt from human subjects review.

Our experiment allowed us to examine whether priming different media through which people view political advertising influences their thinking. Respondents were asked “How strongly do you agree with the following statements about [political advertising/political advertising on television/political advertising online or on social media]?” One third of the sample was in the control condition, which asked about political advertising with no modifiers, one third was in the TV advertising condition, and one third was in the online/social media condition. Respondents were asked about 10 statements, three of which were positive (e.g., I find them entertaining) and seven of which were negative (e.g., they are uncivil). The statements were:

They are annoying

Too many ads are misleading

I find them entertaining

I find them helpful

They are too negative

They are a vital part of campaign speech

Government should do more to regulate them

They should be banned

They are uncivil

There are too many

An exploratory factor analysis of the 10 measures (Appendix B) reveals that one factor is the best solution (only one eigenvalue was above 1). Loadings on this factor ranged from .36 (“government should regulate”) to .68 (“they are annoying”). We also created an ad sentiment index that was simply the sum of each measure, with the positively valenced statements reverse coded. This index was rescaled to range from 1 to 7.

Do people like online advertising better?

Figure 1 reports average agreement with these questions on a 7-point scale, where 1 is strongly disagree and 7 is strongly agree. Across all three conditions, respondents agreed most with the statement that ads were misleading (mean = 5.89). Agreement with the statement that ads were annoying was similarly high (mean = 5.83), followed by the statement that there were too many ads (mean = 5.74). Respondents agreed least with the idea that ads were entertaining (mean = 2.88) and that ads were helpful (mean = 2.87).

Looking at differences across conditions, we find that online advertising was viewed more positively than television advertising. Figure 2 shows the difference between people’s views of television and online advertising, with positive bars showing more agreement that the statement applies to television than to online advertising (Table C1 in Appendix C displays the raw numbers). In four of the 10 instances, the difference was statistically significant (p < .05), and in all of those instances, people were more likely to agree that a negative statement applied to television advertising. Online ads were seen as less annoying, less misleading, and more helpful. Also, people were more likely to report that “there are too many” ads when assigned to the television advertising condition. In general, people were more positive about online advertising than television advertising.

Age and views of advertising

To examine the impact of age, we divided the sample into three age groups: older people (born before 1965), middle age people (born between 1965 and 1980), and younger people (born in 1981 or later), and we focused on the difference between views of television advertising and views of online advertising. We found that views of online ads varied considerably between older and younger individuals. Figure 3 shows the difference in scores between older people and younger people (ignoring middle age people for the moment). Older people found online ads to be more misleading than younger adults, less entertaining and less helpful, and they were more likely to say online ads were “too negative” and “too many” than were younger people (see Table C2 in Appendix C for full numbers). Older people also scored significantly higher than younger people on the ad sentiment index. Views of online advertising, then, were more positive among younger people.

Many of these same differences appeared for television advertising (Figure 4). In 10 of 11 instances, including for the ad sentiment index, there were significant differences between older and younger individuals in their views of television advertising. In almost all instances, older people viewed television advertising more negatively than younger people. The only exception was that older people were less likely to support more government regulation of television advertising than were younger people. This question may tap views of government regulation more than views of political advertising.

Are there differences in the way that young people view television and online advertising? In short, there are not, as Figure 5 shows (see Table C3 in Appendix C). Young people’s views of television and online advertising are quite similar.

But older people are somewhat more likely to have different views of television and online advertising (Figure 6). They are more likely to describe television advertising as annoying and misleading (p < .10) and more likely to agree that there are “too many” ads when it comes to television.

Overall, young people’s views of advertising (both online and on television) are more positive than the views of older people, but young people do not express different views of television and online advertising. And older people’s views of television and online advertising do not vary substantially, though they are more negative toward television on three of the ten measures.

Perhaps one reason for the differences across age has to do with media use, as research shows that older people are more likely to use television and younger people are more likely to use the Internet. Indeed, our survey data confirm this pattern, showing average frequency of television use of 1.75 (on a 1–6 scale) for younger people versus average frequency of television use of 2.75 for older people (The survey asked about hours of use in a typical day, where 1 = none and 6 = more than 6 hours). At the same time, average frequency of Internet use was 3.7 (on a 1–6 scale) for younger people versus 3.24 for older people.

We wanted to see whether the impact of age held when we controlled for media use. Thus, we estimated OLS regression models predicting each of our dependent variables, controlling for both television and Internet use and whether the respondent was in the television (as opposed to the online) condition. Appendix D shows the question wording and coding of each variable. Results are shown in Table 1. Although television use—and to a lesser extent Internet use—was a significant predictor of most dependent variables, age still mattered for people’s responses in all but one case: support for an advertising ban. In 10 of 11 models, older people were more negative toward advertising than were younger people, and in 9 of the 11 models middle-aged people were more negative toward advertising than were younger people. This suggests that the effect of age is more than just a proxy for current media use.

Table 1.

OLS regression estimates of perceptions of advertising controlling for media use.

	Annoying	Misleading	Entertaining	Helpful	Too negative	Vital
High TV use	−0.331**	−0.363**	0.660**	0.775**	−0.276**	0.624**
	−0.087	−0.081	−0.106	−0.103	−0.088	−0.107
High Internet use	0.188	0.207*	−0.350**	−0.456**	0.158	−0.063
	−0.098	−0.091	−0.119	−0.116	−0.099	−0.121
Age (older)	0.527**	0.662**	−0.978**	−0.951**	0.724**	−0.600**
	−0.098	−0.091	−0.119	−0.116	−0.099	−0.121
Age (middle)	0.273*	0.399**	−0.648**	−0.565**	0.532**	−0.378**
	−0.112	−0.104	−0.137	−0.133	−0.114	−0.138
TV condition	0.237*	0.211*	−0.085	−0.185	0.076	−0.168
	−0.102	−0.095	−0.124	−0.121	−0.103	−0.126
Control	0.195	0.229*	0.028	−0.068	0.170	−0.216
	−0.102	−0.094	−0.124	−0.121	−0.103	−0.126
Intercept	5.419**	5.391**	3.413**	3.472**	4.836**	4.210**
	−0.120	−0.111	−0.146	−0.142	−0.121	−0.148
N	1199	1200	1200	1200	1200	1199
R-square	0.035	0.056	0.071	0.084	0.049	0.041

	Regulate	Ban	Uncivil	Too many	Index
High TV use	0.300*	0.001	−0.301**	−0.286**	−0.332**
	−0.117	−0.116	−0.091	−0.088	0.060
High Internet use	0.167	−0.092	0.184	0.281**	0.199**
	−0.132	−0.131	−0.102	−0.099	0.067
Age (older)	−0.396**	−0.082	0.707**	0.715**	0.542**
	−0.132	−0.131	−0.102	−0.099	0.067
Age (middle)	0.046	0.025	0.475**	0.571**	0.397**
	−0.152	−0.151	−0.117	−0.113	0.077
TV condition	−0.033	0.073	0.234*	0.261*	0.148*
	−0.138	−0.137	−0.107	−0.103	0.070
Control	0.182	0.199	0.280**	0.346**	0.183**
	−0.138	−0.137	−0.106	−0.103	0.070
Intercept	4.556**	4.148**	4.421**	5.032**	4.670**
	−0.162	−0.161	−0.125	−0.121	0.082
N	1199	1199	1200	1200	1197
R-square	0.017	0.003	0.049	0.060	0.073

Notes: **p < .01, *p < .05. Standard errors reported below coefficients.

Conclusion

Our study provides some of the first evidence of how Americans view online political advertising. On average, people’s views are mixed—closer to negative than positive. But, more importantly, there are differences in the way that people view television and online ads, with people viewing online ads, on many measures, more positively than television ads, though the magnitude of the differences is not large.

Age has a strong effect on how people view advertising, with younger people viewing advertising—whether online or television—more positively than older people. Yet while younger people do not view television and online ads differently, older people see differences, viewing television advertising more negatively than online advertising, at least on some measures.

Why are people viewing television advertising and online advertising somewhat differently? Negativity appears not to be driving these distinctions as people were no more likely to describe television ads as “too negative” than to describe online ads as “too negative” (Figure 2). The intrusiveness of the ads may provide a better explanation, though admittedly we have no direct test of this mechanism. Still, we show that people think of TV ads as more annoying—perhaps an indication of the interruption in flow—than online ads and are more likely to say there are “too many” compared to online ads. Future research could examine how the features of both online and television ads contribute to perceptions of intrusiveness and how those perceptions are related to both receptiveness to and attitudes toward political advertising.

Age also affects people’s evaluations of advertising. While differences in media use across age groups help to explain some of the differences in views of television and online advertising, age differences still remain. This suggests that the environment in which one grows up—one in which television dominated versus one in which online and social media advertising was ubiquitous—may matter for views of advertising. That said, more testing is needed to confirm why age matters, whether that be differences in past exposure to television advertising, differences in the way in which different age groups are exposed to advertising now, or differences in the ability to navigate an online environment.

Future research might also consider differences across online platforms. Although “advertising online and on social media” is conceptually distinct from television advertising, there remains considerable variation in the intrusiveness of online advertising, ranging from short segments of text to immersive 30-second videos that cannot be skipped.

Our findings are important in several ways. First, as digital political advertising continues to grow in importance, it is vital that scholars know what people think of online ads. Whether people appreciate them or detest them—or view them as something in between—could carry over to how they view political campaigns more broadly, which could influence their willingness to participate in politics and their trust in politicians and government.

Second, our findings suggest that voters are potentially more open to receiving ads on digital and social media channels than on television. If they are approaching these ads with a more neutral as opposed to negative attitude, that could pave the way for greater persuasive power for online advertising. We have presented circumstantial evidence that viewers find television ads to be more intrusive than online ads, and research suggests that increased intrusiveness is associated with the avoidance of advertising (Edwards et al., 2002). Admittedly, though, persuasion is complex, depending on the medium, the source and characteristics of the message, and the characteristics of the receiver. Current literature suggests very small persuasive effects from digital political ads (Coppock et al., 2022), though such studies are still rare.

Third, the public’s more benign views of online ads than television ads should also be considered in proposals to regulate online advertising, whether at the federal, state, or platform level. Simply adopting existing regulations on television advertising may not make much sense if people approach online advertising differently.

One reason online ads may be viewed more positively is that they do not yet dominate, as more money is still spent on television advertising than online (Fowler et al., 2021). Campaigns and platforms might also develop ways to make advertising more intrusive, increasing the odds that advertising will prevent audiences from seeing the content they want. If these changes come to pass—and online ads become even more ubiquitous—people’s relatively more positive views of online advertising may disappear.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Public perceptions of television and online political advertising

Supplemental Material for Public perceptions of television and online political advertising by Travis N. Ridout, Michael M. Franz, Erika Franklin Fowler and Taewoo Kang in Research & Politics.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Wesleyan University for its financial support of this research.

ORCID iDs

Travis N. Ridout

Erika Franklin Fowler

Taewoo Kang

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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