Based Solely on Olympics Ads, McCain Wins

If the outcome of the November general election were based solely on the impact of the candidates' Olympics ads, John McCain would defeat Barack Obama, according to research just out from Nielsen IAG. In the Olympics, both McCain and Obama spent between $5-6 million on ads. And according to the analysis by Nielsen IAG, based on responses of 1,600 likely general election voters who tuned in to the Beijing Games, McCain's Olympic ads were tops in what the research firm labels "breakthrough" (essentially aided recall), candidate recall, effectiveness in communicating the basic message and intent-to-vote increase. The research focused on four ads, two from each candidate. McCain's "Celebrity" ad, the one negative commercial in the batch, portrayed Obama as an empty-headed celebrity lacking in substantive ideas. The ad broke through by a margin of 18 percentage points higher than Obama's best scoring ad, and with a communication effectiveness rating of 90 percent, also far exceeding Obama's ads. But there was also significant backlash for McCain from the "Celebrity" ad. While 17 percent said they had a lower opinion of Obama after seeing the ad, and 22 percent said they'd be more likely to vote for McCain, 27 percent said they'd be less likely to vote for McCain after seeing his negative ad. Obama scored higher points in a single key metric, likeability, although neither candidate came close to the Olympic likeability average of 58 percent. But ultimately Obama's ads couldn't overcome McCain's ads' huge lead in general recall, which translated to a net boost in intent to vote for McCain of 10 percent compared to a 7 percent lift for Obama. While 3 percent may not seem like much of an edge, "it's a meaningful difference from our perspective in terms of viewers walking away more likely to vote for McCain," said Kaplan. The silver lining for Obama: looking at just the undecided voters in the survey the net impact was virtually the same for both McCain's and Obama's ads. McCain still had a commanding lead in breakthrough, but Obama was stronger on driving intent among viewers who remembered his advertising.