NEW YORK—In the run-up to the 2022 elections where Kantar is estimating that political advertising could hit $7.8 billion, the TVB trade association representing America’s local broadcast television industry has issued new research highlighting the effectiveness of TV ads.
The TVB survey of 1,000 registered voters in Virginia found that television was the most important influence throughout the voter decision process (awareness/interest/get more information/consider voting/vote) during the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race.
This was also true for all political affiliations, adults aged 18-34, adults older than 35 and African-Americans, the TVB reported.
The findings also highlighted that television is still key for influencing voters, with local broadcast TV maintaining the highest level (77%) of trust among voters. Social media, at 37%, ranked last. Virginia voters also found “fake news” most prevalent on social media (52%) and cable (43%).
Of those who cited television as the most important in the awareness stage, 68% picked broadcast television.
In addition about four in five Virginia respondents (79%) took action (voting, researching the candidate, discussing the ad with others, etc.) after seeing or hearing a TV ad, including word of mouth and going online.
For local news and information, websites of choice were local TV stations’ sites, the survey found. Respondents preferred them twice as much as the next highest local medium, newspaper websites.
A majority (56%) of voters also selected TV as motivating them to get out and vote. Social media was next at 20%, followed by mail at 17%.
“Exposure to advertising on a media platform does not necessarily guarantee that voters will find that platform’s message important for influencing their voting decision process - with the exception of television,” TVB's chief research officer Hadassa Gerber explained. “Of over 20 platforms included in the study, voters overwhelmingly cited TV as the most important influence; there was no close second.”
More results from the survey are available here and in the graphics below.
