I have yet to hear of a single voter who actually saw those Russian ads before the election. There are statistics as to the number that saw them. But most people speculate that most views of the ads were by Bots, and not by voters.
Consider that most humans are not voters. So even if humans saw the ads, it was irrelevant to most of them.
In contrast, compare the June Townhall article by Wayne Allyn Root. That was forwarded heavily by one human Evangelical to 10 or 20 or 100 of the friends on the prayer list, or that other religious stuff is sent to. Almost every Evangelical family that received that Wayne Allyn Root article was moved by it. Without Root planting the seed, Ralph Reed would have never been able to reap the harvest.
We need to learn from this for 2018 and 2020. Each person who feels passionately about a candidate in the primary, or in November, can have big impact by making a personal appeal to friends and family.
An even bigger impact would be to make new friends and heal some of the rifts in the extended family so they too can be reached with the message.
I saw some of the ads. Staggeringly inane.
They were so bad I consider it prima face proof that Trump had nothing to do with them (no “collusion”): Trump is familiar with high quality advertising, and would never pay good money for such ineffective drivel.