Effectiveness of political ads: The Trump & Bloomberg Presidential Campaigns

From a recent study on advertising effectiveness for the 2020 Super Bowl, we were able to review two political ads from the 2020 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump & Michael Bloomberg.

Here are the videos of the two ads we are going to look at:

1. The Bloomberg Campaign

2. The Trump Campaign

Evaluation

Overall, the Bloomberg ad scored a little higher than the Trump ad on overall effectiveness, with a score of 111 versus 103 (100 is the average or norm for all tested advertising).

The chart below shows how these ads differed on the key metrics behind each ad’s effectiveness score. Overall, the Bloomberg ad was significantly stronger on various “call to action” metrics. These include motivating the viewer to contact the campaign, visit its website, etc. in particular, the Bloomberg ad did a better job in motivating the viewer to recommend the candidate and improve his reputation. Both ads had comparable “likeability” scores. 

However the Trump ad motivated significantly higher levels of dislike. Yet, among its viewers, the ad did manage to score well on its ability to generate talk or buzz among its viewers.

What it means

The African-American Perspective

Both the Trump & Bloomberg ads focused on African Americans and some serious issues they face. Despite this common appeal, the ratings by African Americans were much different. For the Trump Campaign ad, the overall ad effecitiveness score was somewhat lower than its score among the General Population: 97 v. 103. The chart below compares ratings of the two ads among African Americans. As you can see, on overall effectiveness and other important metrics, the gap between the higher Bloomberg ad and Trump ad expanded significantly. The Bloomberg ad appeared to connect much stronger to this group than did the Trump Campaign.

Given the tremendous sums being spent on political advertising, it is interesting to compare objective measures of effectiveness from different campaigns. What we don’t know is how prior views of these politicians and their political policies affect how these viewers respond to them. In this ad, which targeted African Americans, we found the Trump Campaign ad seriously underperformed the Bloomberg Campaign ad. It could very well be that whatever baggage Trump has had with this group, perhaps affected how they responded to the ad. The value of these objective ad tests is their ability to add deep insight into how their political messages are impacting important demographic groups and whether a candidate's advertising can, in fact, change attitudes and responses from these groups.

Michael Wolfe mjw@bottomlineanalytics.com

** All copytest data in this article source: (c) Advertising Benchmark Index (ABX)