• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, June 17, 2016

Both parties are transitioning to general election mode. This means a singular focus: beat Hillary or beat Trump.

The Democrats have started strong, with ads targeting women and Hispanics in a number of swing states.

Republicans are now starting to test different ad strategies with which to attack Hillary Clinton, while also hoping to mitigate the serious divisions presumptive nominee Donald Trump has created within their party.

Conservative super PAC Rebuilding America has taken its first swing at the former Secretary of State with an ad titled “More of the Same.”

Red, White & Blog spoke with the CEO of Ace Metrix, Peter Daboll, to discuss the effectiveness of recent political ads. “‘More of the Same’ which juxtaposed Hillary talking about her emails to Bill discussing his scandal while in office, received the strongest marks of any pro-Trump ads we have seen since January 1 among Independent voters,” explained Daboll.

The scores reflecting how much swing voters learned from the ad and how motivated they were to seek out more information about the issues presented, were the highest of any pro-Trump ad this year. Ace Metrix also saw a positive reaction from Millennials. It garnered the highest Attention, Agreement, Learning and Relevance scores in that demographic group, so far, among Trump ads.

A Koch Industries ad “It’s Time to End the Divide,” was found to be the most successful presidential ad overall, so far this cycle, according to the Ace survey.

The minute-long spot “takes more of a brand approach” to the issue of the growing divide in Washington and throughout our country, Daboll noted. Without mentioning either presidential candidate, the Koch ad seems directly targeted to the moderate voter uninspired by either candidate.

Whether this is a call to vote Republican or for an Independent like Gary Johnson, it is difficult to tell. Regardless, the reactions to the ad, which takes a different approach than most this cycle, were overwhelmingly positive, pointing to a rejection of the extreme negativity pervasive throughout the political advertising sphere.

Daboll notes that negative ads can often have a depressing effect on voter engagement. Their goal is sometimes to suppress, rather than encourage, voting.

He wonders if super PACs and campaigns will learn from the largely successful Sanders ads earlier in the cycle, that focus on issues and positivity, and the newer Koch ad, which employs more subtle tactics to attract voters.