Project Background

In early 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for unlimited corporate and union investment in federal election campaigns with its decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Many politicians, political pundits and scholars feared that the decision would open the floodgates to millions of dollars from corporate and union treasuries being spent on 30-second attack ads. Although special interests with ample funds can purchase proprietary information on campaign advertising, transparency and government responsiveness depend critically on public information. The Wesleyan Media Project seeks to enhance transparency in government by providing public information on how special interests are attempting to influence American democracy in general and in political campaigns in particular. Through the use of unique technology provided by commercial ad tracking firms, we track and analyze all broadcast advertisements aired by or on behalf of federal and state election candidates in every media market in the country.  Since 2018, we have also utilized the Meta and Google platform libraries to track spending on ads on digital and social media platforms. During each election cycle, we provide real-time, public information on the extent of corporate and union spending in federal election campaigns across the country, who specifically is doing that spending and which candidates are benefiting.

The Wesleyan Media Project is the definitive source of data on political advertising for the academic community by source (corporation, union, interest group, party, or candidate) in federal election campaigns, including the presidential nomination race and general election, as well as U.S. House and Senate races. Gathering such data, and making them widely available, is critical for understanding the impacts of changes in the campaign environment, both in terms of the players involved and in terms of the ads that people see.

Through 2024, the source of the broadcast TV ad data was Kantar Media/CMAG (known later as Vivvix and then Media Radar).  In 2025, the WMP switched to AdImpact as its data source.

Kantar/CMAG specializes in providing detailed, real-time tracking information to corporate and political clients.  These tracking data represent the most comprehensive and systematic collection on the content and targeting of political advertisements.  The data include two types of information. First, frequency information tells when and where ads aired.  It contains precise and detailed information on the date, time, market, station, and television show of each airing.

Second, the data provides information about each ad’s content in the form of a video file for each unique creative or individual ad.

CMAG gathers such data by using a market-based tracking system, deploying “Ad Detectors” in each media market in the U.S. In addition to all local advertising activity, these detectors track advertisements on the major national networks, as well as national cable networks. The system’s software recognizes the electronic seams between programming and advertising and identifies the “digital fingerprints” of specific advertisements. When the system does not recognize the fingerprints of a particular spot, the advertisement is captured and downloaded. Thereafter, the system automatically recognizes and logs that particular commercial wherever and whenever it airs. Studies that examine advertisers’ “buy sheets” obtained from television stations and compare them with this CMAG data find that the company’s system is highly reliable in tracking the universe of ads aired.

AdImpact tracks political advertising using a comprehensive monitoring system that covers all 210 U.S. media markets. The company ingests ad-occurrence data from national broadcast networks, more than 1,100 local television stations, regional sports networks, and dozens of national cable networks. When an advertisement is detected, it is captured and assigned a unique audio-visual “fingerprint,” along with a timestamp and relevant metadata. That fingerprint enables AdImpact to automatically recognize and log every subsequent airing of the same ad across markets and networks, allowing for near real-time monitoring. Each ad passes through quality-control review before appearing in reports and dashboards, with additional processing to attach transcripts, viewership, and estimated spend, creating a consistent and reliable record of advertising activity across the television landscape.

After receiving the commercial data, the Wesleyan Media Project processes and codes the ad tracking data from all 210 media markets in the United States. Using videos of ads, project staff first research the entity responsible for airing each political ad, distinguishing between those paid for by candidates, parties, and interest groups. Finally, the Wesleyan Media Project codes the content of each ad on an extensive battery of questions using a web-based analysis platform.

The extensive battery of coding includes: the tone of the ad, whether the ad uses magic words, whether the favored candidate appears narrating the ad, what endorsements (if any) are mentioned, music, gender of the narrator in voiceovers, and what issues are discussed among others. This extensive coding allows for the compilation of a massive database of the content of commercials and frequency of airing that can be used in a variety of ways by academics.