The final countdown
Trump’s digital brawler speaks, a Pennsylvania advertising update, how campaigns are scamming seniors, and more…
FWIW, this week’s newsletter is sponsored by Civic Shout
Welcome to the final stretch of the campaign. 😱 We’re only ~10 days out from Election Day, and the campaigns are racing to the finish line with a dizzying array of new tactics, events, ads, collabs, memes, and media appearances happening every day (See: Beyoncé). We’ll use these last few issues of the newsletter to round up some of the most impactful news and information related to the digital space that we’re seeing. Here we go:
Join Kyle in NYC next Wednesday
If you’re in New York next week, consider stopping by Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus for a conversation on the online race for the White House. I’ll be joined by Glennis Meagher, Kaia Shivers, and Micah Sifry to discuss the digital tactics and trends shaping this election.
Pennsylvania flooded with digital ad dollars
Due to both its sheer size and importance, more money has been spent in Pennsylvania on advertising this year than any other battleground state.
In the past month alone, campaigns and outside groups have spent around $49 million targeting PA voters on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube, in addition to the tens of millions spent on direct mail, broadcast, and streaming television services.
On those four key online platforms, Democrats clearly have a large spending advantage. By our estimates, around 72% of digital spending reaching voters in Pennsylvania is coming from Democratic campaigns, PACs, or other supportive organizations, while 28% is being spent by Trump and his allies. Out of the top 50 highest spending groups across both Meta and Google platforms, 35 are Democratic or left-leaning.
On the Left, the top 5 digital advertisers have been the Harris campaign, Future Forward, WinSenate, Sen. Bob Casey, and American Bridge. On the Right, the heavy hitters include the Trump campaign, Senate Leadership Fund, MAGA Inc, Securing American Greatness, and Right for America.
We should note that while Democrats may have a spending advantage online in the state, we’ve seen data that shows Republicans with a spending edge on local television advertising.
“The most powerful man that we know”
Last weekend, Semafor published an insightful Q&A with two leading Trump campaign communications advisors, Brian Hughes and Alex Bruesewitz. It’s a rare look into how Trump-world views the online media ecosystem and explains a lot about their recent strategies of engaging with podcasters and creators.
Particularly, Bruesewitz spoke about the campaign’s podcast strategy (ICYMI, Trump has been on a lot of podcasts recently) and how they view the pivot away from traditional media:
Something that the mainstream media is getting wrong when we’re talking about our podcast approach is: We haven’t necessarily gone to these podcasts to just target young men. We are targeting people who have been disaffected by the mainstream media, independents who are relatively apolitical. These have provided a really unique medium and venue for us to get our message across. There’s a direct correlation between the bias and the toxicity of the mainstream media that’s disaffected the millions and millions of independent voters and viewers, and now they find their news in these alternative platforms.
Bruesewitz is a millenial digital consultant who, in 2022, published a book titled Winning the Social Media War. He had been involved in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and was interviewed by the January 6th Select Committee for that involvement. Last year, I read his book cover to cover, which highlights MAGA politicians and conservative movement leaders who have succeeded at building audiences online. The content stood out to me because of its uniqueness in the GOP space - I have found very few Republican consultants even interested in organic social media growth and engagement beyond X/Twitter, and most GOP “digital” staffers are singularly focused on fundraising.
During this cycle’s Republican primary, Bruesewitz was very publicly a Twitter attack dog for Trump, using his own platform to savage other GOP candidates like Ron DeSantis. At the same time, his skills had become well known by Trump-world, with Trump calling him up on stage at an event in April 2023 declaring Bruesewitz “the most powerful man that we know…watch this guy.” He officially joined the Trump campaign as a senior advisor in August, after working for allied super PAC MAGA Inc.
For all of the endless hype and ink spilled about Trump’s former “digital guru” Brad Parscale in 2016 and 2020, it feels like there has been shockingly little news coverage about the people behind the former President’s digital approach this time around. Regardless of whether Trump is able to eke out a win on November 5th, Trump digital advisors like Bruesewitz have started to change the way campaigns on the Right reach voters online. If Trump does indeed win next month, you can expect to hear a lot more about Bruesewitz and others like him.
Campaigns are ripping off old people
This week, CNN published a heartbreaking story on how elderly people are falling prey to deceptive political fundraising tactics from groups on both sides of the aisle – you know, the scammy ones that say things like “last chance!,” I’m begging,” or “you’ve been personally selected for this request.” CNN found that certain abusive tactics have caused some elderly folks to give away as much as six figures in total. Check out this particularly horrifying anecdote:
“One 82-year-old woman, who wore pajamas with holes in them because she didn’t want to spend money on new ones, didn’t realize she had given Republicans more than $350,000 while living in a 1,000 square-foot Baltimore condo since 2020.”
I had a visceral reaction reading this story. It’s actually sickening, and I know that some of the people responsible for these scammy or spammy fundraising tactics no doubt read this newsletter.
If you’re one of them, I hope you’ll unsubscribe and find a new career. If you work in political fundraising and you don’t use these tactics, I’m sorry that these types of stories malign your entire industry. I still hope you’ll bookmark this article as a reminder that there are real people on the other end of every fundraising appeal, and not all of them have agency to make rational decisions with their money.
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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $50.4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Working America, a political group affiliated with big labor, spent $723,167 last week on Facebook and Instagram ads supporting VP Harris. The ads focus on attacking Trump with comments like “Would you want a boss that isn’t trusted by his top staff?” and “Would you work for someone who skips paying your check?” and are running in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina.
Beyond the presidential election, the next top-spending candidate on Facebook & Instagram ads this week was Rep. Colin Allred, who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. The majority of Allred’s ads are for fundraising purposes, highlighting that Allred and Cruz are now tied in some polls.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $70.9 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Securing American Greatness Inc., one of several leading pro-Trump super PACs, spent nearly $1 million on Google & YouTube ads last week attacking VP Harris and blaming her for crimes allegedly committed by immigrants. The content of the ads is pretty intense (and not subtly problematic)... and the ads are running across the battleground states with a heavy focus on Pennsylvania.
On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $14.9 million on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $15.7 million on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
Majority Forward, a group that is focused on securing a Democratic majority in Congress, invested heavily in Snapchat ads last week. The group’s promoted content has a very organic, digital-native feel to it.
Presidential head-to-head
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Harris (formerly Biden) campaigns year-to-date:
“We saw over 200% ROAS in two months!”
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Trump’s McDonald’s stunt moves on TikTok
Last weekend, Donald Trump played dress up at the fry station and drive-through window at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. We found that while mocked in some corners of the liberal internet, the former President’s staged fast-food photo op drove hundreds of millions of views on TikTok. We have an analysis of what happened on TikTok in the past week and much more in this week’s FYP newsletter 👇
More from around the internet:
Sen. Bernie Sanders has been stumping for Harris across the internet this week, first joining a live stream with two popular Twitch and YouTube streamers, Pokimane and Valkyrae and later going on Lex Fridman’s podcast.
Tim Walz went for a jog with @katemackz for @therunninginterviewshow
Josh Green at Bloomberg wrote about how Elon Musk is increasingly becoming a popular villain in Democratic messaging, content, and attack ads. Speaking of Musk, apparently he has been secretly scheming with Vladimir Putin.
Trump will be appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” today. People are using Polymarket to bet on the words that he will use during the interview.
Both Trump and Harris have been going on tons of podcasts this cycle – a new-ish development in 2024. According to a new USA Today poll, around 20-25% of likely voters have heard Trump or Harris on one or more of these podcasts. You can check out this breakdown of which podcasts each has been on this cycle.
That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 24,014 readers. If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on Twitter or Threads? Have a tip, idea, or feedback? Reply directly to this email.
"Beyond the presidential election, the next top-spending candidate on Facebook & Instagram ads this week was Rep. Colin Allred, who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. The majority of Allred’s ads are for fundraising purposes, highlighting that Allred and Cruz are now tied in some polls."
WTF is the spend for more dollars at this point? Shouldn't it be all campaign dollars on deck for voter persuasion and GOTV virtually and physically?
Your points about Republicans is spot on.