Donald Trump, the ostensible Republican presidential nominee, proved mostly immune to TV attack ads in the primary race, able to use his dominance of social media to respond with a single tweet that would not only reach his more than 8 million Twitter followers but get repeated across every news medium.
Still, experts warned that Mr. Trump will have to resort to more traditional—and much more expensive—retaliation with paid TV spots in order to compete with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“If he is being pummeled by a bunch of political advertising in the swing states and he is not on the air in those states, in spite of his presence in the news media, that’s going to cost him,” said Travis Ridout, a political science professor at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project that tracks political advertising.
“Maybe not a ton but just a couple percentage points, but that really could matter in the swing states,” he said. “So he is going to want to be on the air. He’s going to need to buy a bunch of TV ads and compete with Clinton and the Democrats at that level.”
But, Mr. Ridout said, Mr. Trump has the advantage of having a well-established public image from being a celebrity most of his life, making it more difficult for opponents to dictate his brand.