(CBS News) NEW YORK -- This year's presidential race is expected to be the most expensive ever. <\/p>\n
The campaigns and their supporters will spend billions of dollars on television ads before it's all over. <\/p>\n
Longtime Republican strategist Frank Luntz, a pollster and communications specialist, has studied hundreds of political TV spots. <\/p>\n
He says most don't work. <\/p>\n
\"You get about 20 percent that actually help the candidate that they're designed to support,\" Luntz observed on \"CBS This Morning.\" \"Twenty percent turn people off -- and that's what's amazing about this -- because they don't understand the ad, it's too complicated, it's too gimmicky. And so, the person watching it actually ends up supporting the other candidate.\" <\/p>\n
To determine whether an ad will hit the spot, media companies bring people into rooms and measure their response. <\/p>\n
\"We use something called 'instant response,' Luntz explains.\"And (people sitting in a room) react on a second-by-second basis. The dial is about the size of a remote control. They turn it up to every word, every phrase, every visual. And so, we can figure out, second-by-second, the exact moment when something either works, impacts them, or turns them off.\" <\/p>\n
Full coverage: Election 2012 <\/p>\n
Luntz showed examples of ads taking on both President Obama and his presumptive GOP rival, Mitt Romney. Both, he said, have their intended impact. <\/p>\n
Both used their own word against them, showing actual statements they made that their foes would feel came back to haunt them. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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\nAnatomy of attack ads that work - or flop<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"