Fundraising data & fake news
The latest data from ActBlue, the rise of Venmo donations, and a conservative fake news network prepares for 2024
FWIW, this week’s newsletter is sponsored by Civic Shout.
Last week, Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue released its fourth quarter report on grassroots fundraising by Democratic campaigns and progressive causes. In this week’s FWIW, we’ll break down the data, highlight a new-ish fundraising option that may be gaining steam, and flag a conservative fake news operation that is back for 2024.
Oh, and make sure you scroll to the end for a viral video of a Governor expertly shotgunning a beer. But first…
By the numbers
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $8.2 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Congressional Democrats’ House Majority PAC is running English- and Spanish-language ads targeting voters on Long Island from a generic-branded Facebook page called “Nassau County Updates.” The special election to fill former Rep. George Santos’s open Congressional seat in NY-03 is less than two weeks away, and these ads attack the Republican candidate, Mazi Pilip, while touting Democrat Tom Suozzi as “the common sense choice.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is continuing her quest to get people to notice her and become Trump’s VP pick. Despite being in charge of a state that is a thousand miles from the southern border, she is running MAGA-esque Facebook ads nationwide attacking President Biden on immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $2.4 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
She Speaks for Me, a Super PAC backing Rep. Barbara Lee in California’s competitive U.S. Senate race, spent big on these YouTube and Google ads last week. Polls have shown the 77-year-old Lee trailing her primary rivals for months, and last summer the Super PAC saw high-profile staff departures after Lee attacked Gov. Gavin Newsom.
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $70,500 on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
…and lastly, here are the top spending political advertisers on X (formerly Twitter) in 2024:
X (Twitter) advertising has been relatively tame so far this year, with Nikki Haley’s account having spent more than any other political entity on the platform. One advertiser that stuck out to us, however, was GOP Rep. Mike Collins, who became something of a viral Twitter sensation during last year’s Speaker of the House drama.
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Your 2024 digital dispatch
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns, as well as their allied Super PACs year-to-date:
President Biden’s re-election campaign continues to outspend the Trump campaign online by 10x, dropping over $1 million last week on Facebook/Instagram and Google/YouTube ads. At the same time, the main pro-Biden Super PAC, Future Forward USA Action, announced the single-largest political ad buy in history.
From around the internet:
Pew Research Center published an updated report on Americans’ social media use. It’s a must-read>>
The state of Arizona is partnering with right-wing content farm PragerU and will be teaching PragerU’s “lessons,” which prioritize Judeo-Christian values and portray an inaccurate view of American history and science, to students statewide.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a swing district GOP member of Congress from South Florida, went viral this week for attempting to claim credit for federal investment dollars that she voted against. One brave local news interviewer wouldn’t let her get away with it.
An experiment by Tech For Campaigns showed that AI chatbots can help campaign digital fundraisers raise between 3-4x more dollars per hour.
Donald Trump’s campaign has been burning its donors’ money on paying his legal fees to the tune of 50 million dollars.
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New data: More money, less donors
Last week, Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue released its quarterly fundraising numbers, showing Democrats and progressives raised $353 million on its platform in Q4 2023. That was a slight increase in the amount raised over the same period in 2019, but the number of unique donors actually decreased significantly, from 3.06 million in Q4 2019 to 1.92 million last quarter.
An ActBlue spokesperson attributed the donor dropoff to a competitive Democratic presidential primary in 2019 that created a unique surge in donors.
However, we’ve heard anecdotes from several others about this trend in both the nonprofit and political space - that many organizations are seeing fewer donors who may be giving higher amounts of money.
Maybe it has something to do with all the spam appeals we’re being bombarded with?
Are Venmo political donations a thing?
Speaking of ActBlue, in December 2021, the company rolled out a new direct payment option on its platform to allow users to donate to campaigns using popular mobile payment app Venmo.
Since the option to donate through Venmo was made available, the company tells me that donors have made 553,000 donations using the tool, totaling $23 million.
That’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the billion dollars raised on the platform each year, but ActBlue is billing the Venmo feature as just one way they are helping campaigns woo younger donors.
“ActBlue is helping the next generation take action by providing tools that make the donation process seamless, easy, and secure,” said Regina Wallace-Jones, ActBlue’s CEO & President. “We're encouraged to see young donors and organizers take advantage of our tools - including payment options like Venmo that are familiar to them - and to see campaigns working to find ways to leverage our tools to reach young supporters.”
Venmo donations aren’t just a thing on the Left. Last summer, when longshot Presidential candidate Francis Suarez was begging for $1 donations to make the GOP debate stage, he attempted to raise money through the app. He actually just asked supporters to wire money to his campaign’s Venmo handle, instead of using a form. That strategy probably caused nightmares for his FEC compliance team, which is required to collect certain data (including job title and employer) for each individual donor.
Conservative fake news network returns for 2024
Conservative fake news operation Metric Media, which operates over 1,000 web properties meant to look like hyper-local news sites, is back for the 2024 election cycle. The organization is currently running Facebook ads attacking Bernie Moreno in the Ohio GOP U.S. Senate primary, hitting President Biden on inflation in several swing states, and criticizing Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin.
Metric Media spent at least $42,000 on these Facebook ads targeting swing voters in the past 30 days. Since 2018, the company has run this type of advertising from 213 different Facebook pages.
Unlike typical partisan or values-driven news startups, Metric Media’s network does not employ actual reporters on the ground nor place bylines on the articles it produces. The group subcontracts out content creation and has been accused of doing the bidding of GOP operatives and PR firms. Its strategy has been covered extensively in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. Here’s a good backgrounder on the network from CJR’s Tow Center.
One more thing: The shotgun Governor
Maryland Governor Wes Moore joined a tailgate on Sunday ahead of a Baltimore Ravens game and was asked to shotgun a beer. The moment made for very good content:
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