The obscuring seems to be unnecessary these days. I don't know how many people are still fooled by names like "Americans for America" who would actually change their vote after finding out it's just a group of real estate speculators or whatever.
I think it's the other way round. You're a respectable individual, you're buying some low-brow ads - and you don't want a newspaper to publish an expose about you, your employees throwing a hissy-fit, or a neighbor getting upset.
I understand that mentality but it's clearly not how people behave. People who buy into bullshit do so as a core personality behavior. It's like how doomsday cult members double down when the predictions don't come to pass.
I mean https://www.heavensgate.com/ is still around. Being discredited has the opposite effect as the intended. It instead concretizes the delusions. Exposing charlatans seems to only increase the fanaticism of their adherents.
You are thinking of a completely different situation. No one is thinking of some real estate guy who wants the dems or republicans to win as their cult leader when seeing those ads.
At least in the US, political partisanship I think is operationally pretty similar to a cult. It certainly doesn't have to exist like this but right now I think it is which is why I brought up the observation in the first place.
I feel like that's an impression caused by the current political media environment but it's not reality. Voter turnout is less than 50% of voting age population in the US and a significant portion of the voters are independents. Silent majority or whatever.