Trump and Biden double down on Facebook advertising

This last election was, as evidenced by the largest popular vote in history, very important to many people. Of course, no one cared more about the election results than President Trump and former Vice President Biden. Although the average voter also seemed highly motivated this year to meet the candidates, as evidenced by the high marks achieved in presidential debates.

One of the many ways that Trump and Biden sought to communicate with their supporters and win over the undecided was through social media, particularly Facebook. I’m not talking about all the free attention that Trump and, to a lesser extent, Biden, received from their own Twitter posts, but about the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on paid social media advertising that reaches all ages, genders. and careers in the United States through the social media giant, Facebook. In fact, each candidate reached all-time highs in Facebook ad spend.

Over the past 22 months, ABC 7 Los Angeles’ Eyewitness News has reported that both Trump and Biden in this election spent more INDIVIDUALLY on Facebook advertising than both Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent together during the 2016 election. Biden reportedly spent more than $ 94 million on Facebook ads in this election, and Trump spent even more, reporting $ 107 million spent on Facebook ads.

Not only were the 2020 elections very good for Facebook, but Facebook overall rebounded strongly from the lower ad revenue generated in the first months of the pandemic. There is no question that social media and digital advertising overheads are rivaling television advertising in importance.

The Wesleyan Media Project, a company run by Wesleyan University (full disclosure, I’m an alumnus), has collected and analyzed a large amount of data on the advertising spending of presidential, senatorial, and congressional candidates.

In the case of the presidential race, they estimated that Trump spent more than $ 426 million on advertising for his candidacy and Biden spent $ 564 million. Even though Trump has less to spend on advertising, he overspent Biden considerably in terms of digital spending, directing more than $ 201 million to digital advertising, versus Biden’s digital spending of $ 166 million. The same pattern existed in terms of television advertising, with Trump spending on television at $ 222 million versus $ 376 million spent on television advertising for Biden.

This year has obviously been a very difficult time for most people economically, socially and psychologically. But thanks to the presidential betrothal, at least the TV advertising and digital advertising businesses got a big boost (political spur, you might say) from the 2020 election.