Maybe local elections. Sometimes that's how I find out the names of the local candidates.

and could verbalize it.

Few people would admit to changing buying habits based on commercial advertising, but obviously advertising has an effect.

They have an effect. People just don't want to admit it, even to themselves.

Advertising works just as well on educated people. It addresses the emotions, not the intellect.

Advertising does generally change the minds of people who already have a strong opinion, but it may temper a positive or negative set of feelings.

There's a whole lot of bonafide, certifiable cretins out there.

Clearly you answer is no, you have not seen such a thing, but instead of answering the question you delve into simplistic crap about advertizing without offering any sort of support for your contention. There is always a reason for that sort of evasion.
Have you ever seen this? No, you have not. The rest is padding.

as it was phrased, it had nothing to do with "witnessing" something, as if political ads had an immediate influence visible to others:

I have never known one person who has ever changed their voting choice based on a television ad, a yard sign or a bumper sticker.

The answer is yes -- all of us have known such people. We just may not know which ones. You don't have to "observe" it at an individual level. Like other advertising, the effects are visible on an aggregate level. Often they are measurable, and in some cases they are striking. The Willie Horton ad clearly affected the Bush-Dukakis race in 1988. So did the Daisy commercial in 1964.

The Citizen's United decision is alarming precisely because candidates with large amounts of money can afford more political ads, which in turn can win elections. There is not a single Democratic campaign manager or pollster who would take seriously the idea that TV ads or other promotion cannot change votes. It files in face of decades of all the disciplines surrounding political campaigning.

Most of us will see double meanings and standards in the language used and in obvious omissions. Most of us will know that texts and words are often out of context. We have been educated via net, bb's and news how that all works.

The only ones buying the ads are those narrow ill informed people that like to have their biases confirmed. The ads will not change those voters minds, it only serves to bolster their resolve to vote the way they were going to vote anyway. It's a way to keep the vote IMHO.

And let the Kocks blow huge amounts in supporting the economy.

and I don't think I've seen more than 4 Romney stickers ... and I think I've seen about the same number of Ron Paul stickers ... but I see lots of Obama stickers.

I'd say 5 to 1 Obama, easy.

the other day and felt like ramming the vehicle; fortunately, I snapped to. My fav has been the middle-aged Papa John's delivery guy in a beater Saturn with Romney and some dare-to-take-his-guns-away stickers. He looked like a total sad sack, a sad sack endorsing Ritchie Rich.

Or at least he did. He puts it on, and takes it off. And lately, he's not put it on. And he has not yet put on a Romney. I doubt he will.

I'm using him as a gauge.

1997 coupe. Great little car. Starts, stops, paid for. Good mileage too. Just put my Obama 2012 sticker on next to the 2008 one.

has low mileage, and has been paid for for 5 years. Not a beater, though, and no stickers for Rmoney, who doesn't give a flying fuck about the "average" American worker.

around here (Philly suburbs) although a few lawn signs have popped up. More Ron Paul & old McCain bumper stickers

Republican voter suppression efforts. Especially since PA is my home state, and I always thought it fairly *sane.*

very famous and those names recognized. If 'name recognition' won such races, incumbent Presidents would always win, the US President is always among the most recognizable names and faces on the planet.

will follow family voting history. Fifty years of door knocking and lit drops seems to show this. Late in campaigns,you might change a mine here and there. Most working households are done making choices by Labor Day and it follows educational levels. Were I've found major shifts is when people obtain better educational opportunities than their parents or relatives. The major thing is making sure the folks read your lit. A educated populist is the best defense against any fascist or theocratic regime. Republicans are scared shitless of educated people.

As for road signs, yes, I can confirm that.

My wife was a complete unknown who was elected by a 2/3 majority to a school board position and almost all we did was put road signs out in the snow along the side of the roads and hand out tri-fold pamphlets (that I printed on an ink-jet) at the transfer station (dump) on Saturday. It's a New Hampshire thing.

Two years later, I took the same approach as campaign manager for a guy who didn't even bother to participate. His opponent spent all day at the transfer station sticking his head into windows saying he was going to cut taxes. The guy I did the campaigning for moved out of the town shortly before the election and STILL only lost by 13 votes. The very first thing the "lower taxes" guy did on the board was propose increasing the stipend for school board members. My wife, "the liberal", was the only one to vote against it.

Do you think negative ads over and over and over again can influence votes?

Based on the cumulative effect of the thinly veiled racist ads.

While phone banking, I spoke to a few people with the same point of view, best expressed by the guy who said 'I have voted for both Parties in the past, right now I'm sitting here with a pad and a pencil making a count of these nasty ads. Whoever runs the most, I vote for the other guy, flat out, tell you candidate that why don't you?'

I do know someone who just posted on his facebook that he changed his mind about his vote and is voting for Obama because he feels like Romney and Ryan are "untrustworthy." Maybe that was from comparing the conventions though? I know he watched both. Still, there could be a cumulative effect.

But I never bought a fucking thing because I watched one.

"If you think advertising doesn't affect you, take a look in your shopping cart next time you go grocery shopping."

Try it sometime. You aren't picking those products because of the ads. But somehow you end up with a cart full of products from well-known brands. Strange coincidence.

...then again it's been years since I've seen an ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon and it's always in my cart..

Are supermarket shelves filled with random local non advertized products, and you simply buy the others or are most of the products brands, highly marketed brands?
Perhaps the choice is made when you shop where you shop, which for most Americans is a brand locus, not a place of choices but an aggregation of major national products?

Because the produce sucks, things aren't labeled well, and there's too much crap out there!

That's why Super Bowl ads are valuable, not for sales so much as branding. What is overly simplistic is saying something like 'advertizing works' without any definitions. If a company could find success in sales simply by running ads, can you tell me why any product fails when all they'd need to do is run more ads and get huge return? Why is there no New Coke? Why is Meg Whitman not Governor of California? Why do films fail in spite of major ad campaigns designed by the best, if all it takes is ads to make a hit, why do more films fail than succeed, even those with huge ad budgets? Why is it that the right wing can not market a documentary hit that outsells Mike Moore or Morgan Spulock? It is easy, right? Just run ads, and ads work, and one is naive to think otherwise. And yet they can not manage it. Why is that? Could it be more complex than just running ads?
Ads can generate interest, and even sales. They can also generate disgust and create failure. If any old ad simply 'worked' why do you think they spend millions developing the ad they think will 'work'? Why not just run stuff, if it just works? Perhaps it is more complex that 'ads work'? Yes, I think so.

I don't even know how some people in my family vote. I know the right wingers...they are loud and vocal.

But no, no one has ever told me he's changed his mind based on that.

But the TV ads are more of a cumulative thing. People get general impressions of the candidate over time. The voter may not even be aware of how they came to their conclusion...that their views of the candidate were formed in part from ads.

Yard signs - no one has told me he's changed his mind based on that. And I certainly wouldn't. But if someone is so non-political and uninformed as to not know who to vote for, he might go along with who his neighbors are voting for.

Advertising won't make you buy something you don't want...but it will suggest options. That's how its taught...and sort of explains the psychological side of what makes it effective. It will give someone awareness to a product or politician and if you're desposed to agreeing with that politician or feel the need for the product, you will react positively...and each message is supposed to affirm the past one. In the end you have a good feeling about the candidate and a negative one of the other guy. So it won't make you change your mind as much as it will firm you up with the feeling you have.

Yard signs help.

Signs ads bumper stickers LTEs all work.

The most expensive ads of course are TV ads in network prime time. Note that networks have a difficult time marketing their own shows into hits, and they own the time, they can place what they want where they want it, and still most of the programming fails to gain traction. How can that be, with endless ad time and the most brilliant of marketing people promoting that product? I guess 'ads work' expect for when they don't? I think that's about it. They work, except when they don't work, and when they don't work, the next question is are the ads harming the brand or the promotion and sometimes the answer is yes.
Each month new heavily advertized product hits the market place and fails. Those ads, they did not 'work'. Each election, both candidates run ads, one of them wins the other loses. The fact that both used ads and those ads failed for one of them means 'ads work, except when they don't'.
But of course, when meeting the Meg (not governor) Whitmans of this world, ad folks tell them 'ads work, buy lots and lots of them please'. Whitman outspent Brown 3 to 1. Governor Brown, as we call him, trounced ad heavy Meg, whom we just call Meg. Perhaps if she'd outspent him 10 to 1 Brown would have won by a larger landslide. Just hard to argue that she won, because she lost, and she sure as hell ran ads like there was no tomorrow....

Advertising works. That does not mean that just because you run more ads than your opponent you will win. Did Governor Brown refrain from advertising? Why not?

I knew I'd probably be comfortable in my new neighborhood when I saw all the Obama signs, in 2008. There was no McCain sign. I previously lived in a very red area of Michigan but the much lower volume of Republican related signs and much greater volume of signs for Democrats really made me happy.

My Jon Tester bumper sticker is for me.

The answer is yes.

The "slick willy" ads during Clinton's first run did give me pause. I had previously voted for the first Bush. But the 1992 RNC convention was so full of hate, I was thinking of not voting at all rather than vote for "slick willy."
Eventually, stading in the voting booth for 30 minutes and struggling with the choice, I held my nose and voted for slick willy.

Never again voted for a Repbulican presidential candidate after that.

I lived in North Carolina when Jesse Helms ran an overtly racist TV ad that suggested affirmative action hurt whites. It MOST DEFINITELY made a difference in that squeaker of a race.

What they actually consciously believe is often only a subconscious rationalization.