NEW YORK—In the wake of a record-breaking year for midterm political advertising, new research from TVB suggests that the massive spending not only was a financial bonanza for stations in battleground states. It also found that candidates that devoted more resources to local broadcast TV advertising received the biggest bang for their buck and that TV ads in those battleground states helped motivate voter turnout.
The new 2022 Voter Funnel survey from TVB examined the media’s influence on voters following the midterm election in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The researchers report that TV was cited as the most important influence at each stage of voters’ decision process: (Awareness / Interest / Get More Information / Consider Voting / Vote). In fact, TV’s influence was more than all other media combined, at every stage.
In addition, 41% of voters selected broadcast TV as motivating them to get out and vote. Cable TV was next at a distant 27%, followed by social media at 24%.
Of those that cited TV as the “most important” influence, 7 out of 10 picked broadcast TV over cable.
TV ads had a ripple effect on 80% of respondents who took some kind of action after seeing/hearing a political ad on television. Additionally, of those that perform online searches, 83% said TV ads influenced their political searches.
The survey also found that local Broadcast TV news was the most trusted news source while news on local TV station websites and/or apps was the most trusted digital source. Voters found fake news to be most prevalent on social media and cable.
On average, in the 10 states, 53% of respondents voted prior to Election Day by mail, drop box or in person (before 11/8/22), an important finding for political campaign managers to factor into their advertising timing/schedule decisions.
Methodology: Conducted by Dynata, interviews were collected via opt-in survey to 10,000 adults (1,000 per state). Respondents were registered voters who saw/heard ads for candidates running for office on any of over 20 media platforms (traditional, digital, etc) in the past two months. They did not have to see a TV ad to be included in this study.
