Candidate advertisements are to election season what Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is to the holiday season—repetitive to the point of teeth-grinding frustration. 

Latrice Grier, an unhoused Fulton County voter, said she wishes the focus was more on informing voters. We met Grier through our community listening sessions this summer and asked her how she felt about the candidates. Grier has been unhoused in metro Atlanta for seven years. Her polling precinct is located in Pittsburgh.

Grier is a prime example of someone exposed to mainstream, untargeted ads. She sees them primarily on broadcast networks and posters. She sometimes receives them in the mail at her P.O. Box. 

“Some of it’s the truth, and some of it’s stretching the truth.” 

In 2020, Georgia flipped blue, by a thin margin, for the first time since 1992. It’s now considered a battleground state, meaning votes here are extremely valuable to presidential candidates. The last presidential election may have spawned a deluge of ads aimed at Georgians, but that was nothing compared to the Harris-Trump race of this year. 

AdImpact, an advertising intelligence and analysis firm tracking ad expenditure this election season, projects ad buys in the state to rise by $186 million compared to the 2020 cycle. The seven battleground states, Georgia included, are projected to receive 76 percent of presidential general election spending.

So with all this money, what do these advertisers hope to accomplish? More to the point, what do they hope to achieve with Fulton County voters?

“Two things,” says University of Georgia political science professor, Charles Bullock. “One would be conversion. By that, I mean winning over the support of individuals who are not already on their side. But as we get closer and closer to [the] election, the emphasis is going to be primarily on mobilization: Make sure that the people who you have some reason to believe would support your candidate, actually complete the job, and that is go out and vote.”

Bullock, co-author of the book The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act, says mobilization is more important in Atlanta, where in 2020, 523,779 Fulton voters participated in the presidential election—about 65 percent of those eligible. That leaves more than a third of Fulton’s voting population available to support a candidate. 

Political ads are nothing new, but metro Atlantans might feel like they’re experiencing a constant barrage of them this year. With so many people spending time on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, election advertisers seem to have their sights set on the digital world. From the beginning of 2023 to the end of August 2024, political advertisers spent more than $619 million on Google and Meta’s platforms. Of that, at least $248 million went to the presidential election. 

AdImpact projects advertisers will spend over $2.7 billion on the presidential election, with $362 million devoted to digital ads. Georgia is slated to receive a substantial portion of that cash.

With a mere 11,779 votes deciding which presidential candidate won Georgia in 2020, advertising could impact the Harris-Trump race. Candidates spent $144 million on ads in Georgia between July 22 and October 8. As of the end of September, ad spend supporting the Harris campaign outpaced those supporting the Trump campaign by $8 million. 

This massive expenditure by or on behalf of both parties is taking up almost half of the U.S. digital ad market. For voters like Terrell Garth, a College Park resident and digital marketing veteran, the aggressive advertising seems more like the world’s most expensive mud fight. 

“Back in the day, there used to be more information [in ads],” says Garth. “Now, it’s just all mudslinging.”

Despite voters’ frustration with attack ads, those creating and purchasing space for them may be onto something, Bullock says. “There’s this irony in that when people are surveyed they say they hate negative advertising, they hate the attack ads. But that research also shows that attack ads are more likely to be remembered.”

The political ads may be remembered but not necessarily for the right reasons. Garth says he’s not voting for Harris, and he would value her television spots featuring more information and policy rather than attacks against her opponent. 

“If she had more positive ads, maybe she’d get more results. But now it’s just all about how crazy Trump is,” says Garth, who watches FOX 5 and WSB-TV “every, single day” for community news coverage. 

Broadcast stations in particular are subject to barrages of ads during election season. Federal Communication Center (FCC) broadcast license holders can neither reject nor edit advertisements from qualified candidates. They are, however, allowed to edit or reject ads from political action committees (PACs), which, Bullock says, play a key role in divisive campaign ads. 

“Often the candidate wants to have some distance with the negative advertising, particularly advertising which is paid for by political action groups and super PACs,” he says. “That is often where the most negative advertising comes out.” 

A 2023 Pew Research study found that 65 percent of Americans “always or often feel exhausted” by politics; 55 percent feel angered by them. Garth says he doesn’t feel anything in particular when he sees an ad. He simply wants more information on each candidate’s platform. 

Dom Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of New Disabled South, a Georgia nonprofit that champions voting accessibility. Kelly explained that Senate Bill 202, passed in 2021, affected how voters fill out absentee ballots, a process that some disabled Georgia voters require assistance with. The measure makes it a felony for anyone other than a designated caregiver to help a disabled person fill out their ballot. Now, some of these voters feel they have no choice but to vote in-person, something that can be prohibitively difficult. 

Kelly attributes SB 202 to claims about widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election. “I know that it scares other voters,” Kelly says. “I’ve talked to other voters who . . . have heard the rhetoric that’s come from outside groups, that’s come from candidates, and have felt that they don’t want to do something that would get them into trouble.”

Fulton County is home to almost 11 percent of all active voters in Georgia. Eleven percent in a swing state like Georgia could make a major difference in who wins our 16 electoral votes.

Hillary Holley can relate to voters’ frustrations but understands the purpose of political advertising, since she’s worked extensively with political ad buys. Holley is executive director of Care in Action, a nonprofit that advocates for domestic workers, primarily women of color. 

Holley and her family have felt overwhelmed by aggressive political advertising since the 2020 election. She recalls a conversation with her mom in 2022 when U.S. Sen. Ralph Warnock won his re-election.  

“I literally got texts from my mother saying, ‘Are we finally going to stop getting bombarded with political advertisements?’” Holley says, laughing. “People don’t want to be spoken at. I see the role of advertising as helping start a conversation, trigger curiosity. Then, when someone comes to your door, when you are at a community event and someone has a table there, you’ve already heard about it.”