(MIDDLETOWN, CT) June 24, 2025 – New research published by the Wesleyan Media Project provides two summaries of political advertising activity in the 2024 U.S. elections. The two pieces appear in the latest issue of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics and are both freely available through open access. The first examines advertising trends on television across all sponsors (open access link) while the second hones in on digital activity on Meta (including Facebook and Instagram), Google (including YouTube, display and search), and Snapchat by federal candidates (open access link).
Key takeaways from the publications are as follows:
Television advertising
- The volume of pro-Harris and pro-Trump television ads between Harris’ entry into the race and Election Day was extremely close.
- Although policy-focused, the ads in the presidential race were extremely negative, with fewer than one percent of pro-Trump ads being labeled as positive.
- Both candidates placed the most emphasis on bread-and-butter issues like the economy and taxes, though pro-Harris ads did pay some attention to abortion rights while pro-Trump ads, for a brief span, focused on policies affecting transgender people.
- Democrats heavily outspent their Republican rivals in House and Senate races.
Read the full paper on television by clicking here.
Digital advertising
- Federal candidates running in the general election last year spent nearly $580 million on digital political ads over the course of the election cycle, including nearly $300 million between the start of September 2024 and Election Day.
- Kamala Harris devoted over 40 percent of her media budget to digital ads in the general election. This contrasts with Donald Trump, who spent only 22 percent of his media budget on digital ads.
- As with TV ads in the paper above, Democratic congressional candidates spent more on digital than Republican candidates, a trend that was consistent with findings from the 2022 midterm elections.
- Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump used Meta primarily for fundraising (41.0% vs. 38.4%), while Trump also emphasized get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts (48.6%). In contrast, both campaigns focused on persuasion ads on YouTube, reflecting its similarity to traditional TV as a video platform.
- Digital ads were generally more positive than TV ads, especially in the presidential race, where 53.6% of Meta ads and 28.2% of Google ads were promotional, compared to just 17.9% on TV. Overall, attack ads were more frequent on television than on digital platforms.
- In the presidential race, TV ads featured more issue mentions than digital ads, particularly compared to Meta ads, which were often “issueless.” YouTube ads carried more issue content than Meta, and in some cases (e.g., Harris on Project 2025 and Trump on immigration) YouTube even surpassed TV in highlighting key issues.
- Issue mentions were less frequent on digital platforms, especially Meta, than on television in House and Senate races. Overall, Republicans focused more on immigration and transgender policies, while Democrats emphasized abortion and healthcare.
About This Report
The Wesleyan Media Project provides real-time tracking and analysis of all political television advertising in an effort to increase transparency in elections. Housed in Wesleyan’s Quantitative Analysis Center – part of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life – the Wesleyan Media Project is the successor to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which disbanded in 2009. It is directed by Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government at Wesleyan University, Michael M. Franz, professor of government at Bowdoin College and Travis N. Ridout, professor of political science at Washington State University. WMP personnel include Breeze Floyd (Program Manager), Pavel Oleinikov (Associate Director, QAC), Meiqing Zhang (Post-Doctoral Fellow), and Yujin Kim (Post-Doctoral Fellow).
Data are provided by Kantar/CMAG with analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. The Wesleyan Media Project is partnering again this year with OpenSecrets, to provide added information on outside group disclosure and candidate status.
The Wesleyan Media Project’s real-time tracking in 2024 is supported by Wesleyan University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Periodic releases of data will be posted on the project’s website and dispersed via LinkedIn, Bluesky @wesmediaproject.bsky.social and Twitter @wesmediaproject. To be added to our email update list, click here.
For more information contact: Ziba Kashef at mkashef92@wesleyan.edu (please also cc media@wesleyan.edu).
About Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Conn., is known for the excellence of its academic and co-curricular programs. With more than 2,900 undergraduates and 200 graduate students, Wesleyan is dedicated to providing a liberal arts education characterized by boldness, rigor and practical idealism. For more, visit www.wesleyan.edu.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
We are social investors who support democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.
