Where have all the yard signs gone?

I don't watch TV or cable news so I cannot really speak to this from experience. From Why There Are No Great 2020 Ads by Bill Scher.

However, it does remind me of something I have noted when driving around. The primaries have just begun. We have had several months of campaigning by seemingly dozens of aspirants. Lots of mainstream media noise and attention.

And yet I see virtually no yard signs and virtually no bumper stickers on cars. I live in an overwhelmingly blue part of town. In past election cycles we grow yard signs faster than privet and kudzu. But not this year.

I am not complaining. The cars and yards look tidier; you aren't confronted as often but cognitively insulting claims.

Its just striking and I hear it hardly discussed at all. What is going on? Irish democracy by citizens, no longer willing to go along with the media circus? Disillusion with the choices? Contentment with the status quo?

I can construct multiple explanations but none of them are compelling for such a prevalent condition.

Scher does not advance any hypothesis. But reading his article and the quest for better advertising, it makes me wonder if campaign managers might not have, subtly, absorbed a lesson from the past election cycle.

Maybe advertising (TV ads, yard signs, and bumper stickers) simply aren't effective. There is plenty of research that supports the contention but that research has been around for years.

In 2016, the winner spent $1 billion to his opponents $1.4 billion, i.e. 40% less. The reality is even worse than the headline numbers. Strip out the generic party spending and focus only on the candidates' spending plus his or her closely allied Super PACs and the gap widens further with Clinton spending $830 million to Trump's $410 million, more than 100% more than Trump. All that spending and a solid electoral college loss.

It would seem to support the argument that advertising is of questionable effectiveness. Still, I am not sure that is the lesson campaign's have absorbed. But I don't have any better explanation.