The State of the Union was strong online
Biden’s team capitalized on the “Superbowl” of political events
FWIW, this week’s newsletter is sponsored by Civic Shout.
Last night, President Biden delivered his third (or fourth, depending on how you count it) State of the Union address before both chambers of Congress. The reviews are in, and the mainstream press has generally praised the performance as “confident,” “energetic,” and “aggressive” as he happily sparred with Republicans and assuaged some concerns about his age.
There were some excellent clips of him attacking the Supreme Court on Roe v Wade, hitting Republicans on Social Security, preaching on taxes, and closing out the speech with an unbelievably strong bit about his age.
It was one of the largest single audiences the President will have this year, and it was an occasion that White House aides had been anticipating and preparing for weeks. More than a few folks in Biden world referred to the event as their “Superbowl.” While the speech has been given in a very traditional format for decades, Biden admin staff and allies knew that many Americans would be watching the State of the Union on “two screens” - scrolling on their phones or tablets while the speech plays on TV.
Ahead of last night’s speech, the White House Office of Digital Strategy held several events to brief and engage digital creators and media brands around the State of the Union. There was a small briefing on Wednesday (Disclosure: Lucy and I were in attendance), followed by a roundtable with Vice President Harris yesterday afternoon, and a creator watch party in the State Dining Room during the speech last night. Makena Kelly at WIRED wrote a little bit about those briefings yesterday. These creator engagement strategies are important, as Biden senior staff (and even the President himself) recognize the declining reach of legacy media and sought ways to distribute moments from the speech far and wide. Since taking office, Biden’s team has prioritized spreading their messaging beyond the reach of their owned accounts like @POTUS and @WhiteHouse.
The White House and Biden campaign also created loads of their own hype content before the speech, including videos telling the stories of the First Lady’s guests, and this video featuring the President speaking with a bunch of fictional presidents from popular films:
It was the first State of the Union in history to be streamed live on Instagram, in addition to the primary stream on YouTube at wh.gov/sotu. The Biden campaign held its own interactive stream, and this morning Playbook reported that the 9pm and 10pm hour last night were the best periods of grassroots fundraising for Team Biden since the President’s launch last year. Here’s a photo of the Biden digital team taking the moment very seriously.
By the numbers
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $11.9 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Rep. Adam Schiff was the top-spending advertiser on Facebook and Instagram (and Google, see below) nationwide last week, and his team’s flood-the-zone strategy paid off. He emerged victorious in California’s jungle primary for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, blocking out his Democratic opponents from second place—all but assuring his election to the Senate in November.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $6.3 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $397,300 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:
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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 year-to-date:
Ahead of President Biden and Donald Trump’s respective sweeps on Super Tuesday, their digital spending continued in the same trend: the Biden campaign continued to outspend the Trump campaign by ~700%. NBC reported that in the 24 hours following Tuesday’s primary elections, the Biden campaign brought in $1.5 million online.
From around the internet:
Facebook and Instagram had a huge global outage on Tuesday morning… which, of course, happened to be Super Tuesday, one of the most important days in this year’s election cycle.
Speaking of outages, Truth Social went down for the first part of the State of the Union last night. Trump was providing commentary there in real-time throughout the speech - and he apparently learned how to use Snapchat filters.
David Gilbert at WIRED has a good look at Brandon Gill, an internet-savvy election denier who won his Congressional primary on Tuesday night and appears headed to Congress. Gill has over 2.3 million followers across various social platforms.
Donald Trump is now hoping for campaign cash from Elon Musk.
Disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) showed up to the State of the Union last night and apparently launched a campaign for Congress.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) finally announced that she will not seek re-election, and the Democratic candidate in that race, Ruben Gallego, had a strong day of fundraising.
Oh yeah, and Russia is doing its fake news thing again.
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Is Congress closing in on TikTok?
Yesterday, a U.S. House of Representatives committee voted unanimously (50-0) to advance a bipartisan bill that would force the sale of social media platforms with ties to adversarial foreign governments. It was a move to target TikTok specifically, whose parent company, Bytedance, has Chinese government ties and experts have warned could be exploited by the CCP.
Ahead of the vote, TikTok sent a push notification to tens of millions of Americans, and chaos ensued. Thousands of users flooded Congress with calls and threats, including at least one kid saying he would take his own life if the government banned TikTok. The massive, rapid-fire lobbying action backfired and pissed off members of Congress who argued that the day’s events only underscored the company’s influence on American political behavior.
I’ve made my personal views clear in the past that if TikTok can’t sever ties with its Chinese ownership, it should probably be banned. The heads of ODNI, CIA, FBI, DOD, and NSA aren’t all expressing serious concern about the platform because they have nothing better to do. If we trust scientists on climate and trust public health officials on COVID, why wouldn’t we trust career cybersecurity professionals on cybersecurity threats?
That said, the politics of this are pretty terrible. Democrats (and Biden) are dealing with a very vocal group of young activists outraged over what’s happening in Palestine, and taking away their favorite app in the middle of an election year probably won’t turn out great for them. If (and that’s a big if) some type of forced sale / anti-TikTok bill were to actually pass Congress, the best the Biden administration could hope for would be a drawn-out bureaucratic process kicking this whole situation down the road past Election Day 2024.
One more thing: Cookie Monster decries shrinkflation
If you’re knocking doors this cycle, don’t forget about Sesame Street (apparently)! After Cookie Monster tweeted a scathing criticism of shrinkflation on X/Twitter, prominent Democrats hopped in on the discourse.
Senator Bob Casey, who is running to defend his seat from Dave McCormick (R) in Pennsylvania, made sure to get the whole gang involved: he tagged both Big Bird and Bert & Ernie and asked them to help him fight back against corporate greed.
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