Harris is far outspending Trump online
Trump’s focus is on Boomers and Gen X while Harris wants to win women of every age.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump speak to different Americans — and they’re advertising to different ones too.
So far, Harris has trounced Trump in digital spending. Her presidential campaign has doled out a total of roughly $100 million between Google ($55 million) and Meta ($44 million) from late July when she began her campaign through early September, according to data from the Wesleyan Media Project. That’s more than five times the $18 million Trump’s campaign has spent with those companies in that timeframe. While there’s certainly other digital advertising out there, Google and Meta account for the lion’s share.
The digital spending isn’t as much as the candidates are investing in TV — to put it in context, in just two weeks (August 26 to September 8) pro-Harris groups spent $64 million on TV ads and pro-Trump spent $57 million — but digital ads can target much more specific audiences. And where they target those ads reveals a lot about what each campaign is focusing on.
Trump’s Instagram and Facebook ads, for example, have a much higher rate of impressions (a measure of the first time people see each ad) by people aged 65 and older, according to data from Ravineo Media Research, which analyzed data from Meta’s Ad Library. Meanwhile Harris’s campaign spending, which includes expenditures under her and name and through Kamala HQ, is more evenly dispersed among age groups.
Harris meanwhile, seems to be gearing more of her campaign’s digital ad spending toward women. That was the case in each age bucket. Trump’s ad impressions by gender are more even overall, though the ads reached a higher share of older women and younger men.
Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, explained that while impressions likely reflect a campaign’s intended targets, it’s not exact as Meta’s algorithms also contribute to who sees what and when. Meta can tell demographics like age and gender based on what people have listed on their profiles and advertisers can select which criteria to target based on that.
Where they’re spending is different, too.
The highest share of ad impressions for Trump were in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida California, and Georgia. The biggest portion of Harris’s ads, meanwhile, were seen in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
The reason for spending in battleground states is obvious, but candidates often advertising in bigger states where they’re guaranteed to win as a way to raise more cash.
