September Swing Sees Trump Ad Campaigns Attract More Attention & Positivity Than Presidential Rival Harris

Ads supporting Donald Trump’s Presidential bid are currently attracting more attention and more intense positive emotions than those supporting Kamala Harris’ campaign. That’s according to new data from creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, which found there has been a swing in favour of the Trump campaign in the last 30 days.

Digital advertising has become a key battleground in the race to the White House, with Harris’ team recently announcing the biggest online ad buy in the history of American politics. However, a new study from DAIVID – whose solutions help advertisers improve the effectiveness of their creative at scale – found that the Republican candidate’s ads released during August and September are generating more positive engagement. 

While in June and July, ad campaigns launched online supporting Harris’ Presidential bid generated more attention and intense positive emotions, over the last 30 days it’s been reversed.

With recent polls making it hard to separate the two candidates with just over a month till polling day, DAIVID used its advanced content testing technology to measure the emotional responses of US voters to ads created in support of the two candidates across YouTube, TikTok, X, and Instagram. Key highlights from the study include: 

• In July, ads launched by the Harris campaign on average elicited intense positive emotions from 47% of viewers, slightly ahead of the content produced by the Trump campaign (46%). However in September, there has been an 8.4% increase in positive feelings generated by Trump’s campaign ads compared to Harris’ 4.7%, putting the Republican candidate slightly ahead of his political rival.
• Both campaigns managed to increase the amount of attention their ads generated in September. However, despite Harris’ campaign ads attracting more attention in July and increasing the amount of attention they generated two months later by 2.6%, they were overtaken by the Trump campaign, who increased the amount of attention they generated by 5.9%.
• This increase in positive engagement is also reflected in both parties’ overall effectiveness metrics, measured using DAIVID’s proprietary Creative Effectiveness Score (CES) – a composite metric that combines the three main drivers of effectiveness: attention, emotions and memory. In July, the Republicans lagged behind the Democrats (5.8) with an average score of 5.7 out of 10. But in September they increased their score to 5.9, while the Democrats’ average score has stayed the same.
• Despite both campaigns increasing the levels of positive engagement this month, they still lag significantly behind the US industry average across all advertising, with ads from this year’s US Presidential Election more likely to make people feel angry, scared, and less hopeful than the average US ad campaign. They are also more likely to make people anxious and disgusted, less likely to make them feel pride or inspired, and attract 6.1% less attention overall.

Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, said: "Recently we have seen a slight change in the tone and content employed by the Trump camp, which in turn has had a positive impact on viewers’ engagement levels. Back in July, we saw ads such as 'I Don't Understand' which was extremely negative, attracting some of the highest levels of anger, fear and anxiety I have ever seen from an ad. But over the last 30 days, campaigns such as '60 Days' and 'A Message From Gold Star Families', while still extremely negative towards Harris, also try to present Trump as someone who can help in turbulent times.

That said, the positive emotions generated by both candidates’ campaigns are still well below the US average. More focus on what they would do to fix the country’s issues rather than how bad the other candidate is – particularly for Harris, who many US voters still feel like they don’t know – would help to boost overall engagement among voters increasingly jaded with the divisive nature of US politics."