Shifted by Similarity? How Politically Targeted Ads Based on Party and Issue Persuade Voters

The scientific literature offers crucial insights into ad effectiveness; however, we argue that research on political advertising should extend beyond measuring success in terms of voting preferences by examining its influence on public opinion regarding broader societal issues. In this paper, we used two experimental designs to examine how politically targeted ads influence people’s attitudes and their stance on the featured issue (i.e., a sugar tax). More specifically, we investigated how people responded to political ads that matched their views or supported their favorite political party. We deployed two large-scale experiments in the Netherlands (Nstudy 1 = 1,182 and Nstudy 2 = 707). Our results indicate that people who are exposed to an ad that aligns with their stance on a given topic or their preferred party will like it more. Ad liking, in turn, is related to the higher importance allocated to the topic shown in the ad. The findings of this work support previous research on the impact of political ads on ad evaluation and perceived issue importance, adding novel insights into changes in issue position. Overall, this study offers new insights into the extent to which targeted communication can be persuasive.