We are a week away from a divisive election battle in the US and it’s become quite overwhelming at times to get a good read on what Americans are really interested in hearing from the candidates.

We took a look at consumer trends during the month of October to find out what matters most to Americans heading into the 2020 Presidential election, where they get key information, and what types of advertising influences them most.

LoopMe’s PurchaseLoop Research survey ran from October 2nd to October 22nd, 2020 with a nationally representative respondent pool of over 2,300 Americans aged 18+ and here are the key findings:

Factors that influence the vote:

• Issues matter most when deciding on factors that influence Americans’ decision on which candidate to vote for, with additional importance put on leadership qualities.

In rank order, Americans care most about the economy & healthcare, followed by social issues & national security. 

Advertising channels with influence:

• News outlets & debates/conventions are the clear leaders for consumers looking to gather info on who to vote for. 
• When asked about preferred advertising choices 43% of total responses opted for “I’d rather not say”. This is substantially higher than all other questions and could show general dissatisfaction across formats for current political advertising messaging. TV & online advertising were the most preferred medium, selected over radio & print.

• As with the preferred mediums of TV & Online, so went ad recall. Print & OOH lagged well behind TV/Radio/Phone/Computer for mediums driving political ad recall. 

In general we saw an overall dissatisfaction with political advertising across the board, which could be indicative of many things including the tone of the ads, the frequency of ad delivery and overall political fatigue as we get closer to election day. However, it was clear that when asked about ad recall that screens with sight, sound and motion were the clear winners where other media choices (print, OOH) were less impactful, especially in a year where screen usage increased and travel outside has decreased due to the COVID-19 impact on our society.

Hear more about this research on his podcast with RBR + TVBR InFOCUS Podcast here

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