FWIW, Some Parting Thoughts

Also inside: AI-generated congressional fan fiction, orgs flood platforms with ads fighting back against Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, and more

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Some personal news from me! This will be my last edition of FWIW – it’s been an absolute honor and a pleasure to write this for you all for the past 2+ years. And stay tuned… FWIW will be back and better than ever in its next chapter, and details will be forthcoming.

For my part, if you want to stay in touch (I love it when people say hi!), you can find me on Bluesky, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own personal Substack (watch this space 👀). And I couldn’t sign off for the last time without sharing some of my thoughts on the major trends and shifts we’re seeing in the digital political world in 2025.

More on that below, but first…

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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:

FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $10.9 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

The nonprofit Put Families First dropped over $168,000 on anti-Elon Musk video ads this week directly blaming Congress for putting billionaires over families with Trump’s budget bill. The ads, which are running both on Facebook + Instagram, seem to be specifically targeting 12 or so key states, including the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona.

Meanwhile, political advertisers spent just over $2.4 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose interesting organic social strategy we covered a few weeks ago, seems to be ramping up paid media now that the primary is less than a month away: they spent over $76,000 on Google + YouTube video ads, including one 15 second spot that pairs Mamdani’s record of supporting local transport with standing up to Donald Trump (an example of the range of messaging that candidates are trying to shoehorn into ads in 2025).

On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $3.6 million on ads in 2025. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date:

The right-wing association of medical professionals Do No Harm, AKA @DoNoHarm, (who’s website seems to mostly be AI generated pictures of medical professionals) dropped over $17,000 on X political ads railing against alleged DEI practices in medical schools.

…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $845,900 on ads in 2025. Here are the top spenders year to date:

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Since day one, we’ve guaranteed 100% or more ROI on every invoice every time. We know that clients starting at a smaller scale are underserved in our industry, so they need to know that their money is well spent. That’s why we make this offer to all of our clients, big and small. Reach out to Ripple On Impact today to get started >>.

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FWIW, Some Parting Thoughts

As I noted above, this will be my last edition of FWIW! For my last newsletter, I wanted to share a few parting thoughts, observations, and even hopefully useful morsels of advice that I’ve gathered as we all are navigating this brave new era of digital political campaigning + tech.

1. Make content you’d watch on your day off.

This one might seem obvious – but I feel like it’s often the first consideration that gets dropped in the shuffle of ideating, drafting, and approving content. I know some folks are more limited than others in terms of what they can create, but no matter who you are or what you’re working with, the ground truth should be: make content that you, at a moment when you are *not* working, would actually click on and consume. And yes, this applies to both organic AND paid strategy.

Sometimes, that will mean you might have to drop some of the policy talking points in order to make a piece of content that reads as human, authentic, and actually interesting. There will be many important moments to talk about the very real struggles we are facing and how to solve them – but they don’t need to be all shoved into a 90-second video.

A normal person would probably not start talking about the opioid epidemic while doing a mukbang of pies from a local diner – so your principal probably shouldn’t either. (And you can tell your Communications Directors I said that!)

2. Celebrities and influencers are cool – but they’re not a digital strategy.

This is something that Emma Bloomberg, CEO of the civic research organization Murmuration, and I chatted about last week. Here’s what a 25-year-old Georgia voter said about VP Kamala Harris’s celebrity endorsements:

“Why are we twerking to Megan Thee Stallion? You know what I’m saying? Like, there’s nothing wrong with it, but at a political campaign? I didn’t see the purpose for it. If it [a campaign] seems too sloppy or not run correctly, that kinda turns me off.”

This quote is emblematic of a larger trend, which is particularly relevant to Gen Z: random celebrity endorsements just aren’t that persuasive to them and, in some cases, may actually make them less inclined to vote if it feels inauthentic. I think this applies to major influencers as well. So, while it can still be a good idea to work with celebs and influencers to drive engagement and views up, it is a tactic to be exercised with caution – and not in lieu of any real digital persuasion strategy.

3. The real lesson to be learned from Rep. AOC is authenticity.

The two recent newsletters that I hear the most about are the ones I did breaking down Rep. AOC’s digital strategy, both paid and organic. And there’s something I feel the need to clarify: replicating Rep. AOC’s digital success is *not* about just copying her content strategy, it’s about using her framework to build something that makes sense for your purposes.

Rep. AOC’s content – notably, on her paid media side as well – carries the vibe of who she would be if she had never stepped foot in Congress: a 30-something-year-old, cool, highly-engaged advocate who has bartended in Brooklyn to make ends meet. Whoever your principal actually is… is who they should sound like online. Which means you do not need to jump on every trend. (As an example, a 60-year-old man who has never opened TikTok does NOT need to be running around saying “demure” and “cutesy”.)

4. Don’t be scared.

This is one of my favorite things that Maya Hutchinson, currently CEO at Battleground AI who also played a role in inventing digital strategy as we know it on the Obama 2012 campaign, said during our conversation.

Let’s get this out of the way: we are going to put time and money and effort into new digital ideas that completely flop – and probably flop publicly, noticeably, and expensively. And we have to be OK with that. That’s the only path to finding the things that work really well and catapult us into the next era of digital strategy. In my tenure of writing FWIW, I have heard so many great ideas from so many smart people: it is my fervent hope that they get the chance to try them.

And with that… I’m signing off! If you want to stay in touch, you can find me on Bluesky, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own personal Substack (watch this space 👀).

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We’ve Been Told It Sounds Too Good To Be True

Since day one, we’ve guaranteed 100% or more ROI on every invoice every time. We know that clients starting at a smaller scale are underserved in our industry, so they need to know that their money is well spent. That’s why we make this offer to all of our clients, big and small. Reach out to Ripple On Impact today to get started >>.

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More from around the internet:

• In peak dystopian internet news, apparently an AI-powered YouTube account is racking up views on fan fiction (emphasis on fiction) AI slop videos about members of Congress – in this case, primarily Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

• Spotify is launching a new discovery and recommendations-oriented feature for podcasts on the platform.

• The “sad beige” lawsuit – the first of its kind, where one influencer accused another influencer of stealing her aesthetic – has come to a pretty anticlimatic end.

• If you make use of burner accounts… a reminder to be chill with them.

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That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 24,361 readers. If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on X/Twitter, Threads, or Bluesky? Have an idea or feedback? Reply directly to this email.

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