Ad buys in presidential campaigns: The strategies of electoral appeal

Two approaches have dominated the study of political advertising: those based on public opinion surveys and those derived from experiments. In this paper, we propose a third perspective based on ad buys—the campaign decisions on when, where, and how often to broadcast particular ads. Using national ad buy data for Bush, Clinton, and Perot in 1992 as well as local ad buy data in four communities around the country, we find major differences in how presidential candidates allocated advertising monies. Bush and Perot spent more of their ad resources nationally than did Clinton, while Clinton devoted more effort to local ad buys. There also were substantial variations in ads broadcast in different cities, in the timing of attack ads, and in strategic alterations during the course of the campaign. Bush, for example, used a stealth advertising strategy in which he aired more positive ads nationally in the last two weeks of the campaign in order to avoid press criticism while keeping attack ads on the air in politically competitive local markets. These strategic differences help to explain the thrust of each campaign and the dynamics of the presidential race.