Lessons Learned: Campaign Advertising in the 2000 Elections

Abstract

Television advertising is a key element of contemporary political campaigns. Until now, however, scholars have been able to say relatively little about the distribution and impact of television ads, primarily because comprehensive data on advertising have not been available. In this article, we introduce a new source of tracking information for political advertising, with information on close to 1 million political ads broadcast during the 2000 election. These data include the time, station, and show on which each individual spot aired; the ad's sponsor; the length of the spot; and an estimate of the cost of the commercial. We use these data to describe the content, tone, timing, sponsorship, and geographic targeting of advertising in the 2000 election with special attention paid to the presidential general election campaign. We then derive a series of lessons about campaign advertising and identify a number of directions for future research.