How do political campaigns impact paid social advertising?
It’s no surprise the 2020 election year was unprecedented. It should also be no surprise that the Presidential candidates spent millions of dollars on advertising. But 2020 was a year unlike any other, and the impact on paid advertising was clear.
After the Presidential election in 2016, marketing analysts came out of the woodwork to identify how each candidate used their campaign spending on marketing (which OpenSecrets.org reported at $6.5B). Many investigated how Hillary Clinton, who outspent Donald Trump by nearly 2 to 1, lost the election. AdAge even broke down each candidate’s spending by state in an attempt to understand where each candidate focused their efforts. However, one advertising platform stands out in the winning candidate’s strategy: Facebook.
In 2016, President Trump knew his audience would be on the Facebook platform, and leveraged the data gathered there to create effective ad targeting campaigns. His campaign team maximized the power of social sharing to spread information like wildfire (we all know what happened in the aftermath, but that’s not our focus here), and spent an estimated $44 million (compared to Clinton’s $28 million).
But how does this compare to 2020?
It pales in comparison.
From July 1st to November 3rd, 2020 the President and Vice Presidential candidates spent a combined $170.29 million on Facebook ads alone (as reported via Facebook). According to Facebook, $86.29 million was spent on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaign, with another $84 million spent on ads for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. This spend came through a variety of pages that included disclaimers for each nominee.
Each candidate spent more on Facebook Ads than both Presidential candidates spent in 2016 combined.
Let’s take a look at how this was spread across the months leading up to election day. Based on the graph below (data from Facebook), it’s clear that each candidate’s daily spend fluctuated in response to current and campaign events, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump contributing the most. Mike Pence and Kamala Harris are smaller in scale, but it’s easy to guess that campaign funding was directed more at the Presidential candidates than for the Vice Presidential candidates.
Although daily spend varied, in the two weeks leading up to the election the four main candidates were averaging a combined $1.7–2.8 million per day. This is significant when we consider how this impacted ad spend for other advertisers who regularly run ads. While the impact from political ad spend may have been lessened in July due to the Facebook boycott led by many large brands, beginning in August this was not the case.
If we look at Facebook as a simple supply and demand system, the increased demand on ad inventory would reasonably impact competitiveness for the impression supply. In fact, in my own work, we saw CPMs increase 60–80% between July 1st and November 4th, 2020. These increases correlated almost exactly with when spikes in political ad spend occurred. It was only by focusing on ad group performance and efficiency that we did not see significant drops in overall campaign performance.
Another layer to consider is the geo-targeting strategy for each campaign and how they messaged their platform in each state. Leading up to the election, the Biden-Harris campaign shifted focus to the key battleground states (and any surprising ones) with messages around getting out to vote. In comparison, the Trump-Pence campaign was projecting messages about strength. Both campaigns leveraged a message around fear — especially around the current COVID-19 pandemic (source: Forbes).
Now, the true impact these ads had on the election outcome is hard to conclude. Clearly, the campaign teams found that what happened in 2016 was significant enough to use this platform again. And despite Facebook putting more restrictions on ads surround social and political issues, they still pushed forward.
What other platforms did campaigns focus on this year?
In an interview with Forbes, the DNC Chief Mobilization Officer Patrick Stevenson, discussed the many other platforms used on the Biden campaign. These included email, Snapchat, TikTok, SMS, and (yes) even leveraged games like Fortnight to reach a younger demographic.
In comparison, the Trump campaign had more volatile months leading up to election day. In July, the campaign experienced a change of campaign managers, which led to a new strategy. After re-evaluating the strategy at the end of July, the team then shifted focus to YouTube. The campaign still used email and SMS, but the main push in the final months was through YouTube ads on the homepage.
As digital marketing becomes more of a focus for political campaigns, it will be important for us as digital marketers to incorporate this in future planning.
The success on these platforms will likely set the standard for future candidates, similarly to how Facebook ads in 2016 helped the Trump campaign succeed and this was reflected in both party’s 2020 strategy.
As digital marketing becomes more of a focus for political campaigns, it will be important for us as digital marketers to incorporate this in future planning. Now we can be prepared for ad platform costs to increase and potential for ad fatigue on SMS or emails.
This is also an opportunity for digital marketers to learn about new platforms. The level of spend used by political campaigns is massive compared to many brand budgets. By analyzing their targeting and creative strategies, we can take learnings to our own brands, and even identify new channels to test.
While political campaign spend influenced ad performance from a cost perspective, the 2020 Presidential campaign strategy and impact poses a great learning opportunity for marketers to leverage in the future.
The information in this article is based of personal experience, observations and research done by the author. Drop a comment or question if you have any thoughts!
