Senate Campaign Digital Spending, 8/21 - 8/27

How much battleground Senate campaigns are spending on Facebook + Google ads

FWIW, here’s how much battleground U.S. Senate campaigns spent last week on Meta ads (Facebook + Instagram) and Google ads (Google + YouTube) in 9 key states. 

Ad of the week: Granite Staters deserve it

Democrats have quite a few policy achievements to run on this fall after a surprisingly productive Congress. Maggie Hassan appears to be the first to run on one of the underappreciated Ws: lowering the cost of hearing aids and making them available over the counter. Also, we want to highlight that while captioning video ads has become a best practice in recent years, we were relieved to see the campaign use closed captions on an ad cut specifically for folks who are hard of hearing. The ad, which targets Granite Staters over 35, promotes a local news spot:

Sen. Maggie Hassan is celebrating the FDA’s decision to soon make hearing aids available over the counter. The senator helped introduced the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act in 2017 and has been pushing the FDA to make this happen. She says it will be a game changer for Granite Staters who have struggled to afford hearing aids: ‘People should be aware that there’s been a monopoly that controls the marketplace for hearing aids. And it’s one of the reasons that hearing aids have been so expensive. So this is really an important step forward.’”

Quick facts:

• The top spending Senate candidate on digital ads last week was Raphael Warnock, who dropped $418,449.

• The state with the most expensive Senate race online last week was Georgia, where candidates combined spent $512,800 on digital ads

• Democratic candidates in competitive races spent $1,549,776 on digital ads last week, while Republican candidates spent $153,593.