Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and reading the latest Semafor Media newsletter, when I came across this item about the 2024 presidential ad bakeoff.
ROI: The 2024 election . . . demonstrated the limits of television advertising. Democrats spent $460 million more on traditional advertising than Trump and still managed to lose handily.
What the hell, Doc – all those dollars and no sense, eh? Shouldn’t the Dems have just set that money on fire?
– Battleground Burnout
Dear BB,
First off, before you start lighting any matches, let’s note this drought-induced ad that ran in the New York Times the other day.
Safety first, yeah?
Meanwhile, here’s the tab (compiled by AdImpact) for all the presidential sturm ad drang this time around, which mostly ran in the seven battleground states.
That’s $1.37 billion vs. $914 million, for those of you keeping score at home.
Then again, maybe not the best investment, as Trisha Oswald and Paul Hiebert pointed out in Adweek,
It’s telling that a recent survey suggests most U.S. adults think there are too many political ads on TV during presidential campaigns.
As Paul Dyer, chief executive of creative agency Prompt, put it, the Democrat’s strategy was to lead with paid media, while the Republicans started with earned media.
Trump’s October appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast—three hours of unscripted conversation that racked up 26 million views in 24 hours, per Newsweek—was a key moment. During the episode, he also made 32 false claims, per CNN. Trump also embraced the creator economy, teaming up with figures like Jake Paul, whose Instagram video with Trump in a playful moment amassed over 1.5 million likes.
Trump in a playful moment? That’s a phrase the Doc did not have on his bingo card.
Most of that two-plus billion was just costly noise, except for the $100 million that the Trump campaign dropped on a culture-war ad, as Rachel Bachman, Laura Kusisto, and Kris Maher detailed in this Wall Street Journal piece.
The political ad that Donald Trump rolled out in the closing weeks of his campaign was designed to confront voters’ feelings on one of the hot-button cultural issues of our time: transgender rights.
It featured 2019 footage of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, saying she supported taxpayer-funded surgery for transgender inmates. The tagline: “Kamala’s For They/Them. President Trump is for you.”
The message hit the target for voters like Richard Amorose, a 48-year-old Philadelphia general laborer. He cast ballots for Democrats in the past, but these days he thinks the party has lost touch with working-class voters and is “all identity politics.”
“They need to stop a lot of their ideology, meaning like transgender, whatever. I have nothing against them,” Amorose said, but, “stop pushing it down my throat.” Trump flipped the blue-collar ward where Amorose lives from blue to red on Tuesday.
Just for the record, taxpayer-funded surgery for transgender inmates has occurred exactly twice, but why get technical about it when there are hot-button issues to demagogue?
The Doc’s diagnosis: As we’ve said before, presidential TV spots ain’t what they used to be. But that won’t keep the 2028 White House hopefuls from dropping three billion on them next time around.
All those dollars and no sense, indeed.
Ask Doctor Ads 