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By: Danilo Yanich
Was the 2016 election really unlike any we had ever seen? The answer is yes and no. From the standpoint of political ads, it was true for the Presidential race. The losing candidate accounted for 75 percent of those ads as part of her total spending of over $1B. But, the winning candidate had Twitter on his side and a media system that gave him $5B in free coveragecalled earned media. That imbalance had never happened before.
In the campaigns leading up to this year, political ad money increased dramatically and there was an expectation that 2016 would see $6 billion in political advertising on local television. Instead, political ad spending remained around the level of the 2012 campaign, but the amount was significant$9.8B in total political ad spending with $4.4B going to local television stations. Most of the local buy was directed at down ballot races.
While much attention is directed toward the Presidential race, the more significant political ad spending effect occurs in Congressional election spendingfrom $2.5 billion in 2006 to $3.8 billion in 2014. Of the 4.2 million ads that aired in the 20152016 election cycle, only 1 million were for the Presidential race. The remaining 3.2 million ads addressed down ballot (Senate, House, Governor, etc.) races (Fowler, et. al., 2016). Further, the 2016 campaign has laid bare the lack of trust that the public has in the media, especially in the breakdown of the newsroom-community connection (Glaisyer, 2016). And, in this era of fake news in which all journalism is rendered suspect, citizens are increasingly left to their own devices to sort out fact from fiction.