Donald J. Trump hosted “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend and gave interviews to at least four national television networks on Sunday. The result: an opportunity to reach millions of potential voters, without spending a dime.
In fact, while many of his Republican presidential rivals have poured money into the airwaves in search of such exposure, Mr. Trump has not spent any money at all on television advertising since he announced his candidacy in June. Yet he has remained at or near the top of most national and state polls for months.
“TV ads are necessary, they can be effective, but in terms of overall value, being the host of ‘Saturday Night Live’ is probably going to get you a lot more as a candidate than 20 ‘super PAC’ ads,” said Dave Levinthal, senior political reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.
Thirty-second television commercials were once signs of a confident, well-financed candidacy for the White House. Now they are seen as a last resort of struggling campaigns that have not mastered the art of attracting the free media coverage that has lifted the political fortunes of insurgent campaigns like those of Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has surged to the top of the polls.
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Mr. Trump’s ability to command media attention and reach voters without depleting his campaign funds is just the latest example of the way that his campaign has upended the conventional approach candidates have used to communicate with voters.
In addition to having done countless interviews, Mr. Trump has been effective in using social media to attack his rivals, and many of his acrid and controversial quips on Twitter are rebroadcast by traditional news media outlets.
“I think he’s found ways to gain print and airtime by being available and quotable,” said Mike Schreurs, the founder and chief executive of Strategic America, a marketing and advertising firm based in Iowa. “He’s probably a more sophisticated user of media than any other presidential candidate we’ve ever seen.”
Always a boon for campaigns, free media — or earned media, as it is sometimes called — has become increasingly important this cycle for several reasons. Mr. Trump, a businessman turned reality-TV star turned politician, has commanded much of the media’s attention that otherwise could have gone to his rivals, without having to spend any money on television ads so far. (Last week, however, he went up with his first round of paid media — and opted for radio instead of television).
The crowded Republican field is another factor in the diminished importance of paid advertising. Positive ads in particular, which campaigns and outside groups typically use early in the election cycle, have been less effective in breaking through the clutter.
“In a big field like this, positive advertising has less value than you do in a two- or three-person race,” said Russ Schriefer, a media consultant who works for the campaign of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. “So I think what you’re seeing is people spending a lot of money on positives, and they’re not really moving numbers, particularly if those people have high name ID to begin with.”
At this point in 2011, Republican candidates and outside groups had spent roughly $6.7 million, compared with roughly $35 million this cycle, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks political advertising. But the influx of money this primary season, strategists and operatives say, has not necessarily yielded large gains in the polls.
Paid advertising right now, said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president for political advertising at Kantar Media, “is more of a show of weakness than strength.”
Paid television ads have so far failed to buoy foundering campaigns or to provide struggling candidates much help in the polls the way the did in previous election cycles. Between January and the end of October, for instance, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, and the outside groups supporting Mr. Bush, ran the most paid ads: 7,539 for Mrs. Clinton and 7,465 for Mr. Bush, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity and Kantar Media/CMAG.
Yet Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Bush’s poll numbers dropped throughout the spring and summer. (Mrs. Clinton’s ratings have since started to rebound, but Mr. Bush’s numbers have remained low.)
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And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin dropped out of the race just as a super PAC supporting him went on a $17 million spending spree.
The campaigns are quick to acknowledge the value of free media. Alex Conant, a spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio’s campaign, said its candidate — a young, telegenic Cuban-American — is one of the most effective tools it has to reach voters directly.
“We put him out there,” Mr. Conant said. “Whenever he’s on TV, that’s a good moment for our campaign.”
Some campaigns even track their earned media impressions, paying attention to which media markets and programs in the early nominating states have the best ratings with the candidate’s target voters. Mr. Rubio’s team uses that information to help determine which television appearances he will make.
Outside groups and the parties themselves are also paying more attention to driving free media coverage.
“We don’t have a candidate who can go out there and make news, so we have to figure out what’s going on and figure out how we can inject our messaging into what is going on in the news,” said Colin Reed, the executive director of America Rising, a Republican super PAC.
Television ads are still important, Mr. Reed added, but “people are getting their information from social media and different ways, as opposed to just television ads.”
And though the Republican National Committee has run several targeted cable ads against Mrs. Clinton, its focus is on building on an existing research file against her from her 2008 run, and trying to place a steady stream of negative stories about her, hoping to fan a perception that she is not trustworthy and does not care about average Americans.
“With Hillary, the ‘drip, drip, drip,’ as she refers to it, just reinforces the narrative, so it doesn’t have to be a $20 million ad,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the committee.
Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC supporting Mrs. Clinton, is similarly making more of an effort than in 2012 to inject itself in the daily media mix, in part to combat all the Republican candidates — and outside groups — attacking her.
Of course, earned media has always functioned in concert with paid advertising, and operatives believe that negative ads could upend the dynamic yet again.
“The real question with paid media will be when the candidates start to spend that money attacking one another, and what impact does that have,” Mr. Schriefer of the Christie campaign said.
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