The not-so-subtle 2024 presidential campaign has begun
Also inside: New midterm spending data + a conservative group lobbies for immigration reform
Welcome back to FWIW! If you’re like us, you’ve spent much of the week frustrated by the voting rights and filibuster debates on Capitol Hill, and have read way too many bad takes about it on Twitter. With so much at stake, it’s been hard to watch, to say the least.
That’s why for today’s issue of FWIW, we’re going to keep it light and highlight one man’s semi-public quest to become President in 2024. 🤡 We’re referring, of course, to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who we have just discovered is aggressively running self-promotional advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
We’ll share what we’ve found after the jump, but first…
By the numbers
FWIW, here were the top political ad spenders on Google platforms including YouTube) last week:
For the fifth week in a row, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign-in-waiting, Save America, was the top spender nationwide on Google ads. The group has spent $1.6 million on Google advertising for fundraising and list-building since October.
One new entry into the Google ads mix was a group called For West Virginia’s Future / WV Strong - a WV-based organization that appears to be softly lobbying Joe Manchin to support the Build Back Better Act with very friendly ads blanketing the state:
Meanwhile, here were the top political ad spenders on Meta platforms last week, including Facebook and Instagram:
The National Republican Senatorial Committee showed no signs of slowing down their high-level ad spending in the new year, again making them the top political ad spender on Meta sites nationwide. The committee released their final fundraising numbers for 2021 this week, showing they hauled in over $104.8 million last year from 443,000 donors. Maybe that’s because they’re targeting *literally everyone* with Facebook ads.
Another notable ad campaign from last week came from Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which spent heavily promoting “common-sense immigration reforms” as a way to solve current labor shortages.
…and finally, here were the political campaigns running ads on Roku’s platform last week:
Bernie Moreno for Senate (OH) 🔴
Taylor for Congress (TX) 🔴
Whatley for State Senate (AL) 🔴
White for Governor (PA) 🔴
Chris Van Hollen (MD) 🔵
Since December, we’ve seen Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) running some video ads touting his progressive credentials off and on. While Van Hollen would typically not worry about re-election in the liberal state, popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is apparently being courted to run against him.
Midterm digital ad spend tracking is here
While we’ll continue to use this newsletter each week to highlight top-level national trends and notable campaigns, we’re also keeping a close eye on Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections happening this November.
That’s why we’re publishing detailed weekly and cumulative digital spending data for battleground races up and down the ballot, available exclusively to our paid subscribers. As campaigns ramp up spending, we’ll also be beefing up these reports with notable ads and takeaways throughout the cycle. You can find these posts as individual sections at the top of our website, and we’ll be sure to link them in each week’s FWIW.
Campaigner: What does ‘digital’ mean, anyway?
In the world of political campaigns, doing “digital” means a lot of things to a lot of people. In this week’s issue of our Campaigner newsletter with Arena, we spoke with Wavelength Strategy’s Emmy Bengtson on how campaigns should structure their digital teams and what Democrats should do to better influence voters online. Read more + subscribe >>
Mike Pompeo targeting early states with ads
Most Republicans have been terrified to even dip a toe in the waters of the 2024 presidential contest, lest they be dragged publicly by a certain former President. Well, someone please forward this email to Donald Trump, because we’ve found one candidate who is overeager to reach voters in key 2024 states. (And no, we’re not talking about Hillary Clinton.) We’re talking about, of course, former Secretary of State, CIA Director, and Congressman Mike Pompeo. Last week, the New York Post published an exclusive story on Pompeo’s weight loss journey, which led us to start snooping around his organization’s digital operation.
Mike Pompeo’s “Champion American Values PAC” (CAVPAC) has spent $195,500 on Facebook advertising since its launch in June, using the platform to introduce the former Secretary of State to Republican voters and build a list for a potential White House bid in 2024.
Although that’s a not-insignificant amount of money, it wouldn’t be notable by itself - Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley are all running pseudo campaign operations online too.
However, when we started to dig into CAVPAC’s ad targeting, we estimated that around half of their spend - $75,000 to $100,000 - has been spent specifically targeting voters in five states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Pompeo’s home state of Kansas. 👀 These ads typically follow the same formula, using hot-button conservative issues to get Republicans in those key presidential early states to sign up or “like” Pompeo or CAVPAC’s page.
Meanwhile, other ads were really, really not subtle:
Other prospective 2024 candidates like former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (Stand for America) and Vice President Pence (Great America) have also created their own campaigns-in-waiting, but have kept a lower profile. Others, like Ron DeSantis, are running their political operations for re-election this year. However, none that we have seen have specifically targeted the early nominating states like Pompeo.
That’s it for FWIW this week. If you enjoyed reading, please give it a share and a shout out on Twitter!