Do Online Advertisements Increase Political Candidates' Name Recognition or Favorability? Evidence from Randomized Field Experiments

Political Behavior

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2014, Pages 263-289

  Broockman, David E ^a   Green, Donald P ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

Author keywords

Campaigns and elections; Field experiments; Mass communication; Persuasion

Indexed keywords

EID: 84901025209     PISSN: 01909320     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11109-013-9239-z     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Adena, M., Enikolopov R., Petova M., Santarosa V., & Zhuravskaya E. (2013). Radio and the rise of the Nazis in Prewar Germany. SSRN Working Paper.
2. Allcott, H., & Rogers, T. (2012). The short-run and long-run effects of behavioral interventions: Experimental evidence from energy conservation. Working Paper, New York University.
3. Aral, S., & Walker, D. (2010). Creating social contagion through viral product design: A randomized trial of peer influence in networks. Working Paper, New York University.
4. Arceneaux, K. (2005). Using cluster randomized field experiments to study voting behavior. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 601(1), 169-179.
5. Aronow, P. M., & Samii, C. (2012). ri: The R package for performing randomization-based inference for experiments. R package version 0. 9. http://CRAN. R-project. org/package=ri.
6. Atkin, C., & Heald, G. (1976). Effects of political advertising. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40(2), 216-228.
7. Bailard, C. S. (2012). A field experiment on the internet's effect in an African election: Savvier citizens, disaffected voters, or both? Journal of Communication, 62(2), 330-344.
8. Bakshy, E., Eckles, D., Yan, R., & Rosenn, I. (2012). Social influence in social advertising: Evidence from field experiments. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC' 12) pp. 146-161.
9. Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., & Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), 893-912.
10. Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Adam, D. I., Kramer, C. M., Settle, J. E., et al. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489, 295-298.
11. Buscher, G., Cutrell, E., & Morris, M. R. (2009). What do you see when you're surfing? Using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages. Computer-human interaction.
12. Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, D. E. (1960). The American voter. New York: Wiley.
13. Carlisle, J. E. & Patton, R. C. (2013). Is social media changing how we understand political engagement? An analysis of Facebook and the 2008 presidential election. Political Research Quarterly. Forthcoming.
14. Casey, K., Glennerster, R., & Miguel, E. (2012). Reshaping institutions: Evidence on aid impacts using a pre-analysis plan. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(4), 1755-1812.
15. Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2010). Dynamic public opinion: Communication effects over time. American Political Science Review, 104(4), 663-680.
16. Danaher, P. J., & Mullarkey, G. W. (2003). Factors affecting advertising recall: A study of students. Journal of Advertising Research, 43(3), 252-267.
17. DellaVigna, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2009). Persuasion: Empirical evidence. NBER Working Paper.
18. Edwards, J. (2012a). DATA: Google totally blows away Facebook on ad performance. Business insider. http://articles. businessinsider. com/2012-05-15/news/31704866_1_mark-zuckerberg-image-ads-advertising-platform. Accessed 24 May 2013.
19. Edwards, J. (2012b). Michigan Supreme Court judge says Facebook campaign won her election. http://www. businessinsider. com/michigan-supreme-court-judge-bridget-mccormacks-facebook-election-campaign-2012-12. Accessed 24 May 2013.
20. eMarketer. (2012a). Facebook usage beats TV during working hours. http://www. emarketer. com/Article. aspx?R=1008657. Accessed 16 Oct 2012.
21. eMarketer. (2012b). US online ad spending to close in on $40 billion. http://www. emarketer. com/Article. aspx?R=1008783. Accessed 16 Oct 2012.
22. Facebook (2011). Case study: Reaching voters with Facebook ads (vote no on 8). https://www. facebook. com/notes/us-politics-on-facebook/case-study-reaching-voters-with-facebook-ads-vote-no-on-8/10150257619200882. Accessed 24 May 2013.
23. Fitzgerald, B. (2012). Most popular sites 2012: Alexa ranks the 500 most-visited websites. http://www. huffingtonpost. com/2012/08/09/most-popular-sites-2012-alexa_n_1761365. html. Accessed 24 May 2013.
24. Galiani, S., Gertler, P., & Orsola-Vidal A. (2012). Promoting handwashing behavior in Peru: The effect of large-scale mass-media and community level interventions. Working Paper, The World Bank.
25. Gerber, A. S., & Green, D. P. (2012). Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton.
26. Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., Kaplan, E. H., & Kern, H. L. (2010). Baseline, placebo, and treatment: Efficient estimation for three-group experiments. Political Analysis, 18, 297-315.
27. Gerber, A. S., Gimpel, J. G., Green, D. P., & Shaw, D. R. (2011a). 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.
28. Gerber, A. S., Kessler, D. P., & Meredith, M. (2011b). The persuasive effects of direct mail: A regression discontinuity based approach. Journal of Politics, 73(1), 140-155.
29. Goldfarb, A., & Tucker, C. (2011). Search engine advertising: Channel substitution when pricing ads to context. Management Science, 57(3), 458-470.
30. Google (2013). Get out the vote-Google politics and elections ad toolkit. http://www. google. com/ads/elections/get-out-vote. html.
31. Green, D. P., & Gerber, A. S. (2008). Get out the vote: How to increase voter turnout (2nd ed.). Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press.
32. Grimmer, J., Messing, S., & Westwood, S. (2012). How words and money cultivate a personal vote: The effect of legislator credit claiming on constituent credit allocation. American Political Science Review, 106(4), 703-719.
33. Hampton, K. N., Goulet, L. S., Rainie, L., & Purcell, K. (2011). Social networking sites and our lives. Pew Research Center for Internet and American Life Project. http://pewinternet. org/Reports/2011/Technology-and-social-networks. aspx.
34. Hansen, B. B., & Bowers, J. (2008). Covariate balance in simple, stratified and clustered comparative studies. Statistical Science, 23(2), 219-236.
35. Hartmann, G. W. (1936). Field experiment on the comparative effectiveness of 'emotional' and 'rational' political leaflets in determining election results. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 31, 99-114.
36. Hill, S. J., Lo J., Vavreck, L., & Zaller, J. (2012). How quickly we forget: The duration of persuasion effects from mass communication. Working Paper, University of California, Los Angeles.
37. Hovland, C. I., Lumsdaine, A. A., & Sheffield, F. D. (1949). Experiments on mass communication. Studies in Social Psychology.
38. Huber, G. A. & Arceneaux, K. (2007). Identifying the persuasive effects of presidential advertising. American Journal of Political Science 51(4): 961-981.
39. Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
40. Kaid, L. L. (2012). Political advertising as political marketing: A retro-forward perspective. Journal of Political Marketing, 11, 29-53.
41. Kam, C. D., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2013). Name recognition and candidate support. American Journal of Political Science. Forthcoming.
42. Kaye, K. (2012). Digital ad spend gap widens between Obama and Romney. ClickZ. http://www. clickz. com/clickz/news/2192377/digital-ad-spend-gap-widens-between-obama-and-romney.
43. Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. New York: Free Press.
44. Lacetera, N., Macis, M., & Mele, A. (2012). Viral altruism? A natural field experiment of social contagion in on-line networks. Working Paper. NET Institute.
45. Ladd, J. M., & Lenz, G. S. (2009). Exploiting a rare communication shift to document the persuasive power of the news media. American Journal of Political Science, 53(2), 394-410.
46. Lewis, R. A. & Reiley, D. H. (2012). Does retail advertising work? Measuring the effect of advertising on sales via a controlled experiment on Yahoo! Working paper, Google.
47. Lewis, R. A., Reiley, D. H., & Schreiner, T. A. (2012). Ad attributes and attribution: Large scale field experiments measure online consumer acquisition. Working Paper, Google.
48. Lewis, R. A. & Rao, J. M. (2012). On the near impossibility of measuring advertising effectiveness. Working Paper, Google.
49. Lodge, M., Steenbergen, M. R., & Brau, S. (1995). The responsive voter: Campaign information and the dynamics of candidate evaluation. American Political Science Review, 89(2), 309-326.
50. Middleton, J. A., & Aronow, P. M. (2011). Unbiased estimation of the average treatment effect in cluster-randomized experiments. Yale University. Unpublished manuscript.
51. Mondak, J. J. (1995). Nothing to read: Newspapers and elections in a social experiment. Michigan.
52. Mutz, D. C., & Reeves, B. (2005). The new videomalaise: Effects of televised incivility on political trust. American Journal of Political Science, 99(1), 1-15.
53. Nickerson, D. W. (2005). Scalable protocols offer efficient design for field experiments. Political Analysis, 13(3), 233-252.
54. Nickerson, D. W. (2007). Does email boost turnout? Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2, 369-379.
55. Paluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Deference, dissent, and dispute resolution: An experimental intervention using mass media to change norms and behavior in Rwanda. American Political Science Review, 103(4), 622-644.
56. Panagopoulos, C., & Green, D. P. (2008). Field experiments testing the impact of radio advertisements on electoral competition. American Journal of Political Science, 52(1), 156-168.
57. Patterson, T. E., & McClure, R. D. (1977). The unseeing eye. New York: Berkley Publishing Group.
58. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 124-181.
59. Pew Internet and American Life Project (2012). Changes to the way we identify internet users. http://www. pewinternet. org/~/media//Files/Reports/2012/Commentary%20-%20counting%20internet%20users. pdf. Accessed 24 May 2013.
60. Public Religion Research Institute (2012). Few Americans use social media to connect with their faith communities. http://publicreligion. org/research/2012/08/july-2012-tracking-survey/. Accessed 24 May 2013.
61. Rosenbaum, P. (2002). Observational studies (2nd ed.). New York: Springer.
62. Ryan, T. J. (2012). What makes us click? Demonstrating incentives for angry discourse with digital-age field experiments. Journal of Politics, 74(4), 1138-1152.
63. Sears, D. O., & Kosterman, R. (1994). Mass media and political persuasion. In persuasion: Psychological insights and perspectives. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
64. Stokes, D. E. (1963). Spatial models of party competition. American Political Science Review, 57(2), 368-377.
65. Stokes, D. E. & Miller, W. E. (1966). Party Government and the Saliency of Congress. In E. M. Warren, & E. S. Donald (Eds.), Elections and the political order, Angus Campbell, Phillip Converse, New York: Wiley.
66. Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2013). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755-769.
67. van Grove, J. (2012). Nearly 20 % of Facebook's mobile users skip the website altogether. Venture Beat. http://venturebeat. com/2012/07/31/facebook-mobile-maus/.
68. Wooldridge, J. M. (2003). Cluster-sample methods in applied econometrics. American Economic Review, 93(2), 133-138.
69. Zajnoc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9(2), 1-27.
70. Zaller, J. R. (1992). Nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
71. Zaller, J. R. (1996). The myth of massive media impact revived. In C. M. Diana, M. S. Paul, A. B. Richard (Eds.), Political Persuasion and Attitude Change (pp. 17-78). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.