The Facebook ad wars heat up
With the final stretch in sight, the Trump campaign is trailing Biden in the national polls. On top of that, there is another area that once was a strength for Trump, but now seems to be a weakness for the campaign: Facebook advertising.
The Trump camp has been spending less on Facebook than the Democrats, a notable downturn that comes on the heels of the campaign cancelling TV placements in key states. The move away from social is the result of the money problems the president’s campaign faces. Despite a strong head start, a result of his reelection campaign beginning in 2017, the Trump campaign bled cash without replenishing their stores.
Right now, President Trump trails former Vice President Joe Biden by nearly two-to-one in Facebook ad spending in the six key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina. In the past week, the president spent about $157,000 in Florida. Biden spent about twice that amount. Importantly, Facebook is no longer running new political ads in the week leading up to the election.
Like much else in the election, these six states make up most of the Facebook ad spend for both candidates. Since the bulk of spending is centered in these six states, nationally, the picture is no better for Trump. The president’s campaign still lags behind Biden’s ad spend by about a million dollars.
Since mid-August, around the time of the conventions, Biden shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in Pennsylvania and Florida. The former vice president’s ability to invest in these swing states is a function of the massive war chest he brings into the home stretch of the election. He raised $383 million in September and a comparable amount in August, giving his campaign $432 million cash-on-hand in the final weeks of the election.
While all this seems to spell bad news for Trump, there is one advantage the president holds on this front. Trump’s campaign never ended, and the mountain of data they generated by running Facebook ads gives him a hard-to-measure edge. Facebook advertising rewards consistent spending on their platform. The more a campaign spends, the more they know about who engages with their ad, the more tailored they can make their next ad, creating a positive feedback loop to breed optimized campaigns.
This cycle won notoriety in 2016 when President Trump made use of Facebook in a way that one high-level Facebook executive called the “single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser.”
A glimpse of this advantage comes through in how far a Trump dollar goes on Facebook. Dividing the total impressions, or views of their ad, by how much each campaign spent on Facebook ads in every state paints a picture of how hard each ad dollar works to yield a campaign’s desired result: attention. Trump’s campaign may not be doing as well financially, but he is still able to win more impressions for every dollar he spends on the platform than Biden. For example, in the last week, a dollar that Trump spent in Pennsylvania, won him 59 impressions on Facebook. Same state, the same week, but for every dollar Biden spent, he won about 24 impressions.
So, while the president spent less on Facebook and in the aggregate and won less impressions, he got more bang for his buck than Biden’s Facebook ad spend.
For the president, this is an important piece of his closing strategy. The Trump camp wants to engage his supporters to tip the scale in these key states, and digital outreach is an important piece of that puzzle. Given his low cash reserves and a tight race in four of these six battleground states, Trump must spend efficiently to get the right people to turn out. The Trump camp is relying on their money working smarter not harder.
For Democrats in the final days of the campaign, the big umbrella approach to politics is reflected in their ad spend on social, something they can sustain given their large reserves of cash. They can spend far and wide, maintaining where they are because of how much money they have. But, looking beyond this moment, Democrats will need to learn how to to efficiently spend on digital ads to produce the same results. Not every candidate will be the same polarizing figure Trump is and being able to spend smart when that happens will be important.
The two strategies for digital ad spend—spend a lot or stretch it—will be put to the ultimate test in the coming days.
