The Election Year That Ads Didn’t Matter

Even though Hillary Clinton is outspending Donald Trump in the TV ad war by a massive five-to-one margin, the home stretch of the general presidential election season finds the two candidates practically neck-and-neck.

The Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign has blasted the airwaves with approximately $96.4 million. The Republican nominee has spent just $17.3 million on television. When each campaign’s expenditures are combined with the ads aired by outside groups aligned with each candidate, Clinton maintains her massive advantage. With super PAC numbers included, Clinton leads Trump on television spending $156.6 million to $33.6 million, according to analysis published by NBC News Tuesday using data from the tracking firm Advertising Analytics.

“Repetition definitely is good, we know. But you do reach a point of diminishing returns,” Ridout said.

“Repetition definitely is good, we know. But you do reach a point of diminishing returns,” Travis Ridout, a Washington State University professor who has co-authored a book about campaign advertising, told The Hill. “The difficulty is that political junkies might be seeing TV all day long and might be seeing tons of ads. And there may be another person only tuning in one hour a day. You shoot for the average voter.”

Clinton’s most recent ad, titled, “Families Together,” attempts to reach out to Hispanic voters as she targets Trump for advocating strict immigration enforcement. The words, “Donald Trump’s plan: tear families apart,” are shown emblazoned across the screen before the narrator says that Clinton has “made protecting children and their families her life’s work.”

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The latest ad from the Trump campaign goes for a more inspirational approach. The ad, titled, “Movement,” features a narrator upholding Trump’s commitment to U.S. families and building a stronger, more unified country.

“It’s a movement, not a campaign,” the narrator says, adding that Donald Trump is its leader.

Championing Trump as a “builder, businessman” and “success” who does “what others called impossible,” the narrator says, “Donald Trump’s priority: you.”

“Dreaming big. Building bigger. United for family, jobs, country. Defined by freedom. Standing together, pushing ahead,” the narrator continues.

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But even though Clinton’s campaign is pouring million of dollars more than Trump’s campaign into reaching voters via TV ads — and even began airing ads two months before Trump’s campaign — her campaign has seen limited results.

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The most recent Reuters/Ipsos general election tracking poll shows Trump leading Clinton by 2 percent. The LA Times/USC Tracking poll shows Trump ahead by 4 points.

The status of the race is much the same in the key battleground states where most of the ad spending is concentrated.

Last week, Trump notched a 5-percent lead over Clinton in the hotly contested state of Ohio, according to a Bloomberg Politics poll.