396 – Results from the 2010 Census Experimental Program
Paid Media and the 2010 Census Communications Campaign: An Experiment to Assess Increased Spending
Nancy Bates
U.S. Census Bureau
Mike Lotti
Accretive Insights
Kristin McCue
U.S. Census Bureau
As part of the 2010 Census integrated communications campaign (ICC), the Census Bureau contracted with an advertising agency to deliver a paid advertising campaign to increase census awareness and participation. This paper reports results from an experiment conducted to assess the impact of increased media spends in a small number of areas. Media outlets included television, radio, print advertisements, and digital advertising. This paper addresses two questions under the experiment. First, were increases in the level of paid media related to increases in census form mail returns? Second, were increases in the level of paid media related to increased census awareness and advertising recall? Results suggests that, for the most part, the increased media spends did not result in higher levels of advertising recall or higher mail return rates over and above the changes produced by the baseline integrated campaign. One explanation is that the baseline advertising levels were already at or near saturation.
