A YouTube ad featuring former President Donald Trump urging supporters to get vaccinated gave flagging inoculation numbers a shot in the arm, according to a working paper published this week.
A 27-second advertisement encouraging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 that ran on more than 1,000 YouTube channels in late October 2021 led to 104,036 more shots being administered, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly,” Trump told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo in a segment of the advertisement.
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The ad also includes a photo of the former president’s eldest daughter Ivanka Trump getting her COVID-19 shot and a clip saying that Trump and his wife, Melania, privately received theirs at the White House.
The ad was seen by millions of people from over 1,000 U.S. counties between Oct. 14 and Oct. 31, running on several channels, including on Fox News segments with Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity.
An additional 100,000 people received their first vaccinations in areas that saw the ad compared to the control counties, research from the study shows. The study measured the cumulative number of first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered to people ages 12 or older in each control county before and after the ads aired.
The ads cost about $100,000 to produce, making the cost per additional vaccine $1 or less based on the results, according to the study.
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Trump has toed the line between encouraging people to get the vaccine and respecting those who decide against it, voicing opposition to vaccine mandates. Last March, Trump recommended people to get a shot, calling it a “safe vaccine” and “something that works.”
As of Monday, over 250 million people in the United States, or 77% of the population, have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
