An Overview of the Wisconsin Advertising Project

Since 1998, the Wisconsin Advertising Project (WiscAds) has undertaken research initiatives to document how candidates, political parties and special interest groups communicate with voters. Initially, WiscAds studied campaign advertisements in the nation’s 75 largest media markets by collecting and analyzing all political advertisements aired on broadcast and cable stations. For the 2002 electoral cycle, the project increases in scope to the 100 largest media markets. This unique database, which has been made possible through a relatively new technology developed by the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), now contains information on the airing of over 1.5 million ads between 1998 and 2002, see The Data.

Television advertising is the primary way that modern political campaigns communicate with potential voters. In a typical presidential, congressional or gubernatorial election, spending on television advertising comprises the greatest proportion of a campaign’s budget. To date, the lack of comprehensive data on the content, timing, volume and targeting of political advertising has limited what policy makers, journalists and scholars can report about the strategies employed by campaigns and the balance of advertising in particular contests. Furthermore, the lack of comprehensive data on advertising activity by parties and interest groups, increasingly active players in advertising campaigns, not only has limited what could be said about the activities of these crucial players but also has made it difficult for a complete picture of advertising activity to be drawn. Finally, the lack of comprehensive data on political advertising has made it difficult for scholars to study the effect and effectiveness of these communications. Put simply, without comprehensive data on the targeting, volume and content of advertising by all the players involved, it has been difficult to study the effect of the main persuasive tool utilized by modern electoral campaigns.

the lack of comprehensive data on political advertising has made it difficult for scholars to study the effect and effectiveness of these communications.

Until recently, it has been virtually impossible to gather comprehensive and accurate information about the content and targeting of national campaign ads. To be sure, it has always been possible to undertake the arduous process of visiting individual stations in selected markets and examining their advertising logs (Magleby 2001), or attempting to gather ad-buy data directly from campaigns (Shaw 1999). Still, such methods cannot provide comprehensive information on both content and targeting at the level of the ad, and these methods have only been employed on a limited scale. Furthermore, these methods often provide no details about party and interest group advertising, an increasingly important part of the strategic mix in modern campaigns. WiscAds aims to tackle this problem.

Obama Bests McCain in First UW Dept. of Political Science / WisPolitics.com General Election Poll

In the inaugural UW Dept. of Political Science/WisPolitics.com survey taken immediately after Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign, Barack Obama leads John McCain by a 13-percentage point margin in the Badger state.

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Top lines from recent UW Department of Political Science/WisPolitics.com survey

Nearly $200 Million Spent on Presidential Campaign TV Ads To Date

Democratic candidates dominate their airwaves. Obama and Clinton were even through Super Tuesday in Ad Spending, but Obama has had a big advantage since then. Many states received advertising in primaries, but only battleground states will see any come the fall. Although there has been some advertising by interest groups, negative ads against McCain have been sparse.

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WiscAds Video Podcast #2 (02/03/08)

Ken Goldstein discusses the shape of campaign advertising heading into Super Tuesday.
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WiscAds Video Podcast #1 (01/31/08)

Ken Goldstein introduces the Wisconsin Advertising Project and lets you know what you will be in for in the upcoming year.
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