The advertising industry has long prided itself on its ability to measure things — reach, frequency, brand lift, purchase intent — with the kind of precision that used to be reserved for actuaries and people who count cards in Las Vegas. Political advertising, however, continues to resist such tidy accounting.

Republicans outspent Democrats on television advertising during the midterm elections, according to AdImpact, which tracks such things. The figures were $5.4 billion for Republicans versus $5.0 billion for Democrats, a difference of some $400 million that might have purchased, say, a modest holding company or a very large yacht.

The outcomes, as they say in the performance marketing world, did not track with the investment.

Overall television spending for the political advertising season, which ran through Nov. 3, reached $11.9 billion, AdImpact said — up 33 percent from the 2022 midterm elections and 6 percent from the 2024 presidential year. The top issues in Republican messaging were taxation, immigration and, of course, Mr. Trump. Democrats emphasized health care, Mr. Trump (from a somewhat different angle), and taxation.

(One notes that Mr. Trump appeared on both lists, which suggests he has achieved a kind of bipartisan ubiquity usually reserved for weather and complaints about airline seats.)

The spending was enabled in part by a June Supreme Court decision allowing party committees to channel larger sums through candidates at the statutory lowest unit rate — a windfall for television stations, if not necessarily for the Republic.

The question now facing political strategists is the one that faces any marketer whose campaign underperforms: What went wrong? More streaming? More influencers? More of whatever it is the young people are doing on their telephones?

These are reasonable questions. But they presume that advertising, applied in sufficient volume, can overcome a message that voters have decided they do not wish to buy. Sometimes the product is the problem.

Original story published in MediaPost: "Republicans Outspent Dems: Outcomes, ROIs? Not So Much"