The Politics of Search

[00:00:00] It is Monday, September 30th. I'm Tod Maffin. Here in Canada, it is the National Day for Truth

[00:00:06] and Reconciliation, which is a stat holiday here, but I know it's probably not a stat where

[00:00:11] you are, so today a special deep dive marketing science episode. We marketers make a lot of

[00:00:18] assumptions about people. The Conservatives like big showy patriotism like flags and anthems

[00:00:24] and progressives like anything to do with the environment. There you go, problems solved.

[00:00:30] Now you have your creative. But what if we're missing a huge piece of this puzzle?

[00:00:35] User behavior. How people of different political leanings interact with the marketing tools

[00:00:41] that get us the sale? One of the biggest tools, of course, is search ads. Is it possible

[00:00:47] the conservative buyers and liberal buyers think of and use our Google ads differently?

[00:00:56] That's what Alex Davidson said out to discover. He's the author of a research paper published

[00:01:00] last month in the journal of advertising called How Political Orientation affects trust in search

[00:01:06] advertising. He's an associate professor of marketing at Wayne State University in Detroit.

[00:01:11] He joins me now from his office in Montreal, Dr. Davidson, welcome. Yes, hi, Tod. Thank you for

[00:01:17] you. So is this true? Does the way people think politically have a bearing on how they use search ads?

[00:01:23] Yeah, that's largely what I found in my research. So what I was studying, what I was interested in,

[00:01:32] is what I define as search ad avoidance. And search ad avoidance is this deliberate or sometimes

[00:01:42] unconscious way that us as online users will avoid or bypass the sponsored advertisements that

[00:01:50] appear in search engine results pages. So you've might have noticed that you've done this sometimes

[00:01:56] where you search for something on Google and even though there's an ad that addresses what you're

[00:02:02] searching for instead, you click on the organic link. You don't want to click on the ad. You might

[00:02:08] have had some friends that have done this. I noticed this when I was searching for a barbecue brush

[00:02:14] not too long ago and then I saw a webpage from Home Depot that was being promoted as an ad. And

[00:02:20] then I saw that exact same webpage in the organic section and I chose the organic one. And so

[00:02:26] I started thinking, what's going on here? Why are we doing this? And there's some research

[00:02:34] indicating that people's trust in advertising affects their willingness to engage with ads.

[00:02:41] And so I started wondering, okay, if people generally have a distrust in advertising,

[00:02:49] is there a way for marketers to identify groups that have higher levels of trust in advertising?

[00:02:53] And so I began to look at people's political orientation. So why is it that political orientation

[00:03:01] would affect the way people react and engage and click on ads? Well, first let's understand what

[00:03:10] political orientation is. So political orientation could be understood as the set of beliefs people

[00:03:17] have about the proper order and governance of society. I would argue that our political orientation

[00:03:24] is largely responsible for our core beliefs and values affecting what we do and don't trust.

[00:03:33] So we've seen increasing polarization over the last few decades and our political orientation

[00:03:40] has come to affect nearly everything we do. You mentioned some of them at the beginning here,

[00:03:46] but it really does affect everything from where we live to what we read and watch,

[00:03:51] to who we're friends with and even who we want to have a relationship with. And in regards

[00:03:55] to the way that we process online information, it became clear to me that there should be a liberal

[00:04:02] conservative divide in the trust towards sponsored versus organic communications.

[00:04:09] So compared to liberals, conservatives should be more likely to think that advertising plays a

[00:04:15] just role within marketing. And is that because conservatives generally skewed toward

[00:04:22] capitalism and the fair market itself is self-governing and therefore it is the most pure form

[00:04:28] of fairness possible? Yeah, exactly. And this is something that research has shown over and over again,

[00:04:35] conservatives do have more pro business attitudes than liberals where liberals have more pro

[00:04:41] government attitudes than conservatives. This is one of the biggest differences between

[00:04:47] both sides of the political spectrum. And so given that conservatives should consider advertising

[00:04:56] to be more fair and more just, you would assume that they would have higher levels of trust in

[00:05:02] advertising. Now how you can sort of test that and extract that experimentally, that's where I

[00:05:09] started to think about interesting ways we can do that. And so the search engine results page,

[00:05:16] I think is a wonderful way to test this theory because pointing to my earlier example, it often

[00:05:22] presents the same website as a sponsored ad and as an organic link. So you have both options.

[00:05:30] And when presented with both options, I expected for conservatives to be more likely than liberals

[00:05:36] to choose the search ad over the organic link. And that's exactly what I found. Even though

[00:05:41] the ad listings were identical between paid and organic. Yes, exactly. So I ran a few studies.

[00:05:50] In one of them, I looked at actual Google analytics data. And I compared the clicks towards a retail

[00:06:02] website. I looked at the difference between clicks coming from search ads versus organic links.

[00:06:09] So while I wasn't exactly sure how similar the search ad was the organic link,

[00:06:15] I did find that the effect was there, right? That conservatives, more than liberals would click the

[00:06:21] search ad over the organic link. But then I brought that into a more controlled setting where I ran a

[00:06:31] couple of experiments through online surveys. And there I was able to show people a search ad that

[00:06:38] looked the identical as an organic link. And in the experiment, I identified which one is the search ad,

[00:06:46] which one is the organic link? And again, you see the same result manifest. So it seemed pretty

[00:06:54] conclusive to me that conservatives, because of what we refer to as their system just to find tendencies,

[00:07:04] not to get too technical. But because of their willingness to trust the marketplace,

[00:07:13] to perceive market-based activities as more fair and legitimate, they have these higher levels

[00:07:19] of trust and advertising. And that comes through really strongly with in search engine marketing.

[00:07:27] You did four experiments. One was based on polling data of where Americans saw their political

[00:07:33] leanings, and then you matched that up with clicks. But that data came from polls in 2018.

[00:07:39] Now since 2018, a lot has happened in the US. There was January 6, Biden stepped down.

[00:07:45] Two is as an Asian attempt against Donald Trump. How do you think your results would be different

[00:07:51] if you'd used more recent polling data? Do you think there's been a change that much of a shift

[00:07:56] in American politics that it trickles down to the results marketers get? So that's a great question.

[00:08:04] Arguably, you could say that within conservatives or within liberals, liberals,

[00:08:11] you might see shifts over time. Usually, slight shifts, nothing to major. We know

[00:08:19] from research within US politics that by and large conservatives tend to stay

[00:08:27] conservative, liberals tend to stay liberals. And then there's those independence are

[00:08:32] undecided in the middle who usually are attracting the attention of politicians. Now

[00:08:37] what's important when conducting the kind of research that I'm looking at is not so much

[00:08:45] whether these shifts occur, but whether in making comparisons between conservatives and liberals,

[00:08:54] we see large differences from one year to the next. And that's where we don't see a lot of

[00:09:02] significant change. If anything, they become more polarized. So conservatives seem to rally

[00:09:10] more strongly around their ideology over time and liberals do the same thing. So in my research,

[00:09:19] based on my theory, if what I'm saying is correct, that conservatives more than liberals

[00:09:25] tend to justify and perceive market-based systems and advertising as more fair, then that shouldn't

[00:09:36] dissipate. That if anything has only become stronger over time. And, you know, as marketers,

[00:09:42] we want people to click on our ads and probably a lot of organizations, brands, companies,

[00:09:48] one of their prime audiences are people who would vote liberal. Did any of your studies suggest ways

[00:09:55] to mitigate ad-invoidance for audiences that are less receptive like progressive liberals,

[00:10:01] so Democrats? So I didn't introduce anything to manipulate people to act differently,

[00:10:11] but what I also found within my research is that the way in consumers search will affect

[00:10:21] how they process information and it will affect, whether or not they click on ads. So let me

[00:10:28] give you an example here. At the beginning of the customer journey, consumers tend to conduct what

[00:10:36] we call broad searches. So if I'm looking for a new laptop and I'm just beginning my customer

[00:10:44] journey, I'll go on to Google and I'll simply type in the word laptop to begin my search.

[00:10:52] Now perhaps a few weeks later after I've done a lot of searching, I've done a lot of thinking

[00:10:58] about this and I'm closer to making a purchase in the later stage of my customer journey.

[00:11:04] I'm more likely to conduct a more specific narrow search and now my search term might look

[00:11:10] something like laptop with 14 inch screen and 10 hour battery. So when we conduct these broader

[00:11:20] searches such as laptop, we tend not to take the search process too seriously at this point.

[00:11:27] It's kind of like we're window shopping. We have this exploratory mindset.

[00:11:33] And because we're not using much of our brain power, the fundamental parts of our personality

[00:11:39] and therefore our core beliefs and values are going to shape how we process information.

[00:11:45] And so I expected that for broad searches specifically, we should find this effect where

[00:11:50] conservatives are more likely to click on search ads than liberals. And that's actually what I

[00:11:55] found. But for these narrow researchers that happen later on in the customer journey,

[00:12:01] we do tend to take the search process more serious. So we are using more brain power that enables

[00:12:07] more flexibility in our thinking. And so in those cases, our core beliefs and values are less

[00:12:13] influential compared to the actual content of the information we're processing. In other words,

[00:12:19] for narrow researchers, the narrow searches, I did not expect to see any differences between

[00:12:24] conservatives and liberals in search ad clicks and I didn't find any. So all this to say

[00:12:30] that offsetting search ad avoidance among more liberal oriented consumers is likely to happen

[00:12:39] ads there further along in the customer journey. Your research focused on the U.S. did you

[00:12:45] give any thought to help people in other countries might behave differently across the political spectrum?

[00:12:50] I absolutely have and I have not conducted any research on that yet, even though I am a Canadian

[00:12:57] that is an area I would like to dip my toes in. But I am also interested in looking at

[00:13:05] differences in consumers, political orientations, in countries and cultures that differ

[00:13:12] from the U.S., where the political spectrum doesn't align with the way it does for Americans.

[00:13:20] So I'm currently at the beginning stages of a research project that's going to explore

[00:13:26] the effects of political orientation on search ads in Japan to see if we see similar effects

[00:13:34] if they materialize in the same way that they do in the U.S., but as of now, I can't answer

[00:13:40] that question just yet. Let me ask you a broad question. Maybe unfair because you didn't study it

[00:13:45] specifically, but what does your gut say in terms of how political polarization will affect

[00:13:51] consumers trust of digital advertising as a whole? There are no unfair questions. So

[00:14:00] everything is acceptable, but it's hard to say exactly how that will affect trust. Right now,

[00:14:09] what we see is a difference in that conservatives are more trusting and they tend to have these

[00:14:16] tendencies to want to for lack of a better word, conserve and preserve the economic market

[00:14:25] and political systems that we currently live in. And so with that, we have seen lots of evidence

[00:14:34] that more liberal oriented people are more oriented towards organic forms of promotion and marketing

[00:14:42] and content. And that seems to be the way the trend has been going for a while and will likely

[00:14:48] continue to go, but there is no guarantees that that will continue indefinitely. And like we've seen

[00:14:56] in the past with the relationship between, for example, political ideology and political party

[00:15:04] preference. Those two have not been consistent over time, right? So not that long ago, the Republican

[00:15:12] party was the party of the more progressive branch of the U.S. electorate. So yeah, things can

[00:15:22] definitely change and there's been no shortage of surprises in the last few years when it comes

[00:15:28] to politics. But I don't expect anything like that to change to, when we talk about trust

[00:15:35] and digital advertising, I don't expect much change in the near future. How can we exploit this

[00:15:43] as marketers? What, what's the bottom line? What should we be doing as marketers to change

[00:15:49] the way we use Google ads or other search engines to take advantage of this knowledge that you're

[00:15:55] bringing us? I think this research highlights an issue that marketers might have not been fully

[00:16:02] aware of and bringing it to light can help them better prepare for their campaigns, for their

[00:16:09] strategies. So for example, if they are targeting more liberal oriented marketplaces and I have ways

[00:16:17] that can be identified in my research, if they are doing that and they're realizing maybe they're

[00:16:25] not getting as high of a click through rate as they like. Perhaps they're not converting in a way

[00:16:31] that they would expect. This research is in place to say, okay, there could be a reason and that

[00:16:38] reason could be that that marketplace simply does not trust your ads as much as your organic links.

[00:16:46] So what can you do in that situation? Well, one idea is don't abandon your SEO strategy.

[00:16:54] Your search engine optimization strategy. Don't take your foot off the pedal. You want to maintain

[00:16:59] and perhaps even enhance your SEO efforts in that particular situation and especially for liberal

[00:17:07] oriented consumers at the beginning stages of their customer journey. Another thing that they might

[00:17:15] want to consider and my research is going to pursue as it continues is the effect of things like

[00:17:21] trust symbols in search ads. So search ads can play a role in impacting the level of trust

[00:17:30] that consumers perceive in them by having information related to ratings, by having information

[00:17:39] related to endorsing the product from a legitimate, recognized individuals or perhaps just having

[00:17:48] trust symbols that say that a certain business has a certain level of accreditation

[00:17:54] or that it's been certified or it has a guarantee by enhancing trust arguably. We should see

[00:18:01] that even among those marketplaces that have more distrust and advertising, hopefully

[00:18:08] marketers can sort of recoup and take advantage and make sure they don't lose out on those

[00:18:14] marketplaces. That is something I'm going to look at in my research and it's something I encourage

[00:18:19] digital marketers to examine as well. Well, your paper is fascinating and I want to thank you for

[00:18:25] taking a moment to share with us. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been great. I really appreciate it.

[00:18:30] Alex Davidson is an associate professor of marketing at Wayne State University in Detroit

[00:18:35] and is the author of Countering Search ad avoidance how political orientation affects trust in search

[00:18:42] advertising. We have a link to his paper in the show notes.