“A fresh series of Facebook ads this week by Elizabeth Warren seeks to put the social media giant on the defensive — by telling a lie,” CNN reports.

“The ads, which began running widely on Thursday, start with a bold but obvious falsehood: That Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have endorsed President Trump’s reelection campaign.”

“The ad’s own admission of a lie seeks to draw attention to a controversial Facebook policy Warren has spent days criticizing. Under the policy, Facebook exempts ads by politicians from third-party fact-checking — a loophole, Warren says, that allows Zuckerberg to continue taking ‘gobs of money’ from Trump’s campaign despite Trump’s ads telling untruths Joe Biden and his son.”

“Joe Biden presidential campaign has sharply scaled back his online advertising, cutting spending so severely since August that he is now investing only a fraction of what his top rivals are on Facebook and Google, the two dominant internet platforms,” the New York Times reports.

“In a race where many voters are following politics on their smartphones, Mr. Biden’s pullback is an unusual and potentially worrisome sign about his appeal among the Democratic activists, young people and donors who are especially engaged on social media. Candidates rarely withdraw so much money from their online campaigns unless they are seeing weak results in online fund-raising, according to interviews with digital strategists.”

Some Democratic presidential candidates “are in danger of being ‘bled dry’ by spending well more than $1″ on social media advertising in an attempt “to get a $1 contribution and meet the debate criteria,” Bloomberg reports.

CBS News: “A series of Facebook video ads for President Donald Trump’s re-election efforts shows what appears to be a young woman strolling on a beach in Florida, a Hispanic man on a city street in Texas and a bearded hipster in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., all making glowing, voice-over endorsements of the president.”

“There’s just one problem: The people in the videos that ran in the past few months are all actually models in stock video footage produced far from the U.S. in France, Brazil and Turkey, and available to anyone online for a fee.”

Politico: “Advertising Analytics, a political ad-tracking firm, expects the total cost of TV and digital ads for the next election to hit over $6 billion — a 57 percent increase over the total in last year’s hotly contested and expensive midterm elections, driven by a huge jump in digital video advertising.”

“Over one-quarter of the $6 billion total, $1.6 billion, will be spent on digital video platforms, primarily Facebook and Google, while broadcast and cable TV stations will take in a whopping $4.4 billion — more than twice as much as Democrats and Republicans spent on TV in the last presidential elections.”

President Trump’s campaign bought nearly $1 million in Facebook ads urging users to sign a birthday card to commemorate his 73rd birthday, Vice News reports.

“The users who click through to sign such ‘cards’ have offered gobs of contact information to help the president’s re-election effort build out voter lists that will be crucial to raising money. Imposing an arbitrary deadline for supporters to act, the birthday ads have been essential to a digitally savvy Trump campaign that strategists say has built out a sizable early lead over Democrats in collecting voter data.”

Quartz: “Google has been treating Beto’s campaign ads as if they weren’t political content, raising questions over whether Google is capable of keeping its already anemic promise of transparency for political ads. Google has promised to put ads it receives from candidates for U.S. federal political offices in its political ad archive, for transparency’s sake.”

“But the Beto ads reviewed by Quartz were missing from the archive—until we alerted Google to their existence. Google’s own rules don’t allow any political content in Gmail ads, but Beto’s campaign ads kept showing up there.”

“Political ad spending will increase to $9.9 billion in 2020,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“That would be up from $8.7 billion in 2018, the year of the most recent midterm Congressional elections, and $6.3 billion in 2016.”

NBC News: “Trump’s spending in early 2019 was more than the Democratic campaigns combined, but he has been outspent by some candidates in recent weeks. Beto O’Rourke outspent Trump two weeks ago, dropping $157,000 on Facebook compared to Trump’s $109,000. Last week, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), spent $198,000 to the president’s $150,000.”

“While Democrats’ campaign launches have sucked up national attention, President Trump’s re-election campaign has quietly spent nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads,” Axios reports.

“Political advertising strategists say that this level of ad spend on digital platforms this early in the campaign season is unprecedented. The data (captured between December 2018 and now) provides a window into the Trump campaign’s 2020 strategy, which until now has been virtually invisible aside from a few rallies.”