FWIW: “That was some weird sh*t.”

Well, in the words of George W. Bush, “that was some weird sh*t.” The Republican National Convention - and what felt like one of the longest weeks in the Trump era so far – finally concluded, and the race for the White House is now in the final sprint.

Last week, we wrote about how the Biden campaign reinforced their messaging online during the DNC and how the Trump campaign attempted to counter-program. In this week’s FWIW, we’ll take a look at the reverse, and weigh in on which side pulled off our country’s first virtual political conventions better.

But first…

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has spent over $144.4 million on Facebook + Google advertising since the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has spent $71 million advertising on those same platforms. Here’s how much each campaign spent just last week:
 

Over the past two weeks, both campaigns have been dropping a pretty penny aiming to energize their supporters and hype them for the final sprint of the campaign, and reach new audiences with their convention programming or counter-programming. While the Biden campaign significantly outspent the Trump campaign in terms of Facebook ads last week, they were blown out of the water when it comes to Google ads. 

This is due in part to the fact that the Trump campaign spent a ton of cash on their multi-day YouTube homepage takeover during the DNC. They spent $6.5 million through the Donald J. Trump for President Google disclaimer last week compared to $1.3 million the previous week.

FWIW, here are the rest of the top spenders on Facebook last week:

…and here’s what last week looked like in terms of Google advertising:

Each week, we’re breaking down Facebook spending in key presidential battleground states, beginning with Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Here’s how much the campaigns and major outside groups spent on ads focused on the presidential race from August 16 - August 22.
 

Last week, the Biden campaign began testing different pages on Facebook. Around 25% of their ads targeting Wisconsin came out of half a dozen new pages they appear to be testing: Biden for Wisconsin, Joe Biden for WI, Biden Harris for Wisconsin, etc. They spent between $7k - $13k the ads on each page, which consisted of static fundraising ads like the ones below.
 

Our thoughts and prayers are going out to rapid response staffers and journalists who had to sit through four sometimes boring, sometimes cringeworthy nights of the Republican National Convention, because that was some terrible sh*t. From an embarrassing roll call to speeches that pretty much described Democrats as bringers of the apocalypse, this week’s event stood in sharp contrast to the Democrats’ big show last week. 
 

Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans weren’t subjected to it, and the RNC only drew about 10 million viewers compared to the DNC’s 16 million through night three. That said, both presidential campaigns tried to expand their reach beyond the networks and reach voters online with their programming or counter-programming throughout the week.

Team Trump on Facebook

Throughout the week, the Trump campaign spent significantly on Facebook quickly clipping bits from RNC Convention speeches and serving them in ad form to key voters in battleground states. They’ve already put at least five figures behind three supporting speeches from prominent Black supporters of the president - Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones, and football player Herschel Walker - specifically targeting voters in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. 
 

That isn’t quite all, though. Team Trump is also running fundraising and list-building ads on Facebook mocking Joe Biden’s speech performance, and serving red-meat speech videos to their supporters nationwide. 
 

Facebook obviously remains the Trump campaign’s platform of choice, and if you want to know why, you should read this terrifying, sober look at the platform from the NYT’s Kevin Roose. 

Unlike the Biden campaign and the DNC Convention – which ran FB, Snap, YT, Google, and programmatic ads all last week – the Trump campaign’s paid media approach this week seems relatively constrained to Facebook. They weren’t even up on TV anywhere but DC. 

Department of Counter-Programming

In contrast, the Biden campaign’s and the Left’s counter-programming has so far seemed pretty robust. VoteVets put out a stellar ad the final day of the RNC featuring a testimonial from the father of the first soldier to die under Trump’s watch; the Biden campaign also put out a great ad last night; Republican Voters Against Trump put out two new powerful ads themselves; Kamala Harris gave lengthy remarks yesterday; and she also did a town hall with Essence Magazine as well as a few local events including this virtual roundtable in Detroit. Oh yeah, and the Biden campaign did some A+ trolling by buying keepamericagreat.com. 

But wait, there’s more! All this week, the Biden campaign spent over $40k on Snapchat ads targeting young voters in six swing states featuring clips from Kamala Harris’, Barack Obama’s, and Michelle Obama’s speeches from the DNC.
 

…and on Facebook, they’ve already turned Mike Pence’s and Don Jr.’s remarks at the RNC into ads that effectively fact-check what they said for the lies that they are. They also ran the above Snapchat ads on Facebook too.