 But money isn't the only reason to keep these ads alive. Green says that while they may not be super effective on voters, television advertisements help show potential donors that this is a serious and successful campaign to get behind. It's not for no reason, for example, that a lot of campaign commercials are produced that are almost never aired, in part because they're just there to impress donors and to get free media as kind of outrageous or current events, whatever they are, things that will attract news attention.