Can political advertising influence the subjective well-being of voters? With the perception of subjective poverty as a measure of well-being, this study attempts to answer this question. Using the perception of poverty as a measure of well-being and information on advertising expenditure in mayoral elections in Colombia in the period 2011-2016, I estimate a linear model of probability in repeated cross-sections to establish the relationship between these two variables. In the most demanding specification, an increase of a standard deviation in advertising spending per voter is correlated with an increase of 1.9 percentage points in the probability that an exposed individual declare himself as poor. In addition, i present preliminary evidence of the mechanism,with the effect being explained by the expenditure coming from the challengers candidates, and not by the different ideological trends of the competing candidates.
