Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 193
The Magnificent Seven
“The rise of celebrity politicians is fueling record ad spending that will likely continue to flood American airwaves through next year’s midterms,“ Axios reports.
“Firebrand congressional freshmen and sophomores are raking in grassroots donations — and starring in ads from both allies and opponents alike. It’s part of an explosion in small-dollar fundraising that’s translating into a huge spike in paid political advertising.”
The Daily Beast reports that 18.4 million Facebook users have viewed ads promoting an unproven process to “reverse” abortion.
“Footage from Afghanistan is already starting to pop up in Republican political ads, and GOP consultants say it’s going to provide TV-ready ammo for attacks heading into the midterms,” Axios reports.
“The haphazard U.S. withdrawal is the first major policy vulnerability presented by the Biden administration. The opposition expects it to play heavily in 2022 messaging — and even in the 2024 presidential contest.”
Wall Street Journal: “A top advertising-industry observer expects elections this year and next will see political ad expenditures of roughly $9 billion, more than doubling the amount spent in the 2018 midterm cycle.”
New York Times: “The single biggest advertiser in Facebook’s political advertising database in recent months is not President Biden, the Democratic or Republican parties or even any of the hundreds of candidates angling for advantage in the 2022 midterms. Instead, it is an obscure mortgage-related firm, Lower My Bills, which in an earlier internet era was best known for its omnipresent — if ostentatious — banner ads featuring dogs in goggles, dancing cowboys and strange green aliens that had little to do with interest rates.”
“Now, the firm is spending millions of dollars on ads featuring headlines like ‘Biden is on a roll’ as it pursues clicks it can convert into new customers. Some of the ads feature an animated likeness of Mr. Biden in a suit; others have the president in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt while hula hooping on the beach.”
“Over the past 90 days, Lower My Bills has spent more than $10 million … After being contacted by The New York Times, Lower My Bills began running at least two new Trump-related ads this week on Facebook.”
Pew Research Center: “Five major publicly held local TV station companies – Gray, Nexstar, Scripps, Sinclair and Tegna – report political advertising revenue separately from other types of revenues in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In 2020, the five companies reported a total of $2 billion in political advertising revenue, compared with $1.2 billion in 2018 and $843 million in 2016, the two most recent election years.”
FWIW: “Even in a world of TikTok challenges and IG Reels, Snapchat remains an effective advertising platform for campaigns and organizations to reach younger voters with quick vertical video and static content. Nearly half of Americans aged 15 – 25 still use the platform, and in 2020, political advertisers spent a record $21.2 million on Snapchat advertising attempting to reach them.”
“However, in the Biden era, that’s changed. Out of the nearly $2 million spent in 2021 thus far on Snapchat political ads, Republican ad spend only makes up around 0.1% – just around $2,500 spent by the RNC.”
“A dark-money group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer helped pay for deceptive ads aimed at depressing Republican general election turnout in 2018,” Axios reports.
“These attacks came not during GOP primaries, but within weeks of the 2018 general election, as Democrats explored ways to drive a wedge between Republican candidates and their most ideologically committed voters.”
For example, ads were run against Josh Hawley (R-MO) seeking to paint him as a “pro-government gun control, career politician.”
Facebook will finally allow advertisers to resume running political and social issue ads in the U.S. on Thursday, Axios reports.
“Google will lift its ban on political ads on Wednesday, ending a self-imposed prohibition that had been active since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol,” Politico reports.
Politico: “Facebook and Google’s on-again, off-again bans on political ads are hitting campaigns during a crucial fundraising window, cutting off a key pipeline to potential supporters and disrupting early planning for the next round of elections, from state and local races this year to looming midterm elections in 2022.”
“The self-imposed bans — put in place, lifted and then reimposed in some form by both companies since the week before Election Day 2020 — have essentially pressed pause on a political industry that spent $3.2 billion advertising on Google and Facebook in the last two and a half years. Some digital political firms are freezing hiring due to the uncertainty surrounding their biggest ad platforms. And the bans have interfered with organizing and early fundraising efforts piggybacking off a new administration and the start of a new election cycle.”
Google informed its advertising partners Wednesday that beginning Jan. 14, its platforms will block all political ads, as well as any related to the Capitol insurrection, “following the unprecedented events of the past week and ahead of the upcoming presidential inauguration,” Axios reports.
The Markup monitored what happened when Facebook reversed its political ad ban ahead of the Georgia Senate runoffs.
“While Facebook’s controls were in place, we found that links to traditional news sites were present in almost all election-related posts that appeared on our Georgia panelists’ feeds. After Dec. 16, however, when Facebook flipped the switch to turn on political advertising for the Georgia election, we noticed that partisan content quickly elbowed out news sites, replacing a significant proportion of mentions of the election in our users’ feeds.”
“Facebook said it will begin letting advertisers run ads targeting Georgia voters about the state’s Jan. 5 runoff elections, starting Dec. 16 at 9 a.m. Pacific Time, even as its broader temporary political ad ban remains in place,” Axios reports.
Google informed its advertising partners that beginning Dec. 10, it will lift the post-election political ad ban that went into effect after polls closed on Nov. 3, Axios reports.
Wall Street Journal: “Facebook told the advertisers it is continuing to ‘temporarily pause’ all ads on social issues, electoral or political ads in the U.S. for another month, though it may lift sooner.”
“Thousands of ads from Joe Biden’s campaign have been blocked by Facebook as part of the social media giant’s pre-election blackout on new political ads, which the Biden camp said erroneously swept up ads that had already been approved to run,” Politico reports.
“The ads have been down since Tuesday, Biden’s campaign said on Thursday evening, costing the Democratic presidential candidate a half-million dollars in projected donations and altering the advertising plan right before the election.”
“The Trump campaign has sent Facebook advertisements to tens of thousands of voters in swing states, erroneously telling them it was election day after the social media group’s ad blockers failed to detect messages that violated its rules on misinformation,” the Financial Times reports.
“Facebook later removed the messages, but not before they had been seen by about 200,000 voters, mostly in swing states such as Florida, Arizona and Georgia.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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