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2020 ElectionsReleases

Trump Launches Attack Ad Blitz and Steyer Covers Airwaves

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP Digital Spending at $84.6 Million in Presidential Race (MIDDLETOWN, CT) October 24, 2019 – Television ad spending by presidential candidates has ramped up over the past six weeks, according to a new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Presidential candidates have spent over $22 million on television ads since September 12 (Table 1). That spending represents nearly 60 percent of the total spent on presidential TV ads in 2019. TV spending has been driven largely by Tom Steyer, who has spent over $14 million on ads since September 12. That accounts for almost 60 percent of his…
Wesleyan Media Project
October 24, 2019
2018 ElectionsBlogReleasesYear-End Summaries

Latest WMP Research

Photo: John Brighenti/Flickr 2018 Political Advertising Year-end Summary Published in PS (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 27, 2019 -- New research published in PS by Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz and Travis N. Ridout, co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project, offers a post-mortem on political advertising in 2018, providing important context for that year’s “blue wave” in which Democrats picked up 40 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Using ad tracking data from the Wesleyan Media Project, the authors find that in the vast majority of races, there were more pro-Democratic than pro-Republican ads, including in the most competitive contests—and even in those races…
Wesleyan Media Project
September 27, 2019
2020 ElectionsReleases

Digital Spending Dominates in Early 2020 Presidential Race

Candidates Have Spent $61 Million on Facebook and Google and Just $11 Million on TV (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 19, 2019 – Spending by presidential contenders on ads on Facebook and Google has reached $60.9 million this year, according to a new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Those same candidates have spent about $11.4 million on television ads. Table 1 shows that topping the list of spenders on digital advertising is Donald Trump, whose campaign and joint fundraising committee with the RNC have spent almost $16 million on advertising on Facebook and Google, the two largest digital platforms for political…
Wesleyan Media Project
September 19, 2019
Blog

Tracking Political Ads in Smaller Media Markets

Some districts harder to track than others, but not many competitive races are affected (MIDDLETOWN, CT) July 24, 2019 - The Wesleyan Media Project obtains ad data from Kantar Media/CMAG, which represents the most comprehensive and systematic collection on the content and targeting of political advertisements. There is, however, one feature of Kantar’s data that we want to highlight for our data users: each media market in the country is either a “discovery” market or a “non-discovery” market. Discovery markets have technology that allows them to compare new sound wave patterns from ads to the existing database to determine whether…