Skip to main content
Tracking Political Ads in Smaller Media Markets 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…
2020 Digital Spending Update 2020 ElectionsReleases

2020 Digital Spending Update

Trump Bets on Online Spending;Warren, Biden, Harris Top Democratic Spenders; Men Seeing More Online Presidential Ads   (MIDDLETOWN, CT) June 6, 2019 - In this early part of the 2020 election season, Donald Trump has spent vastly more on digital ads than his Democratic rivals, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Since May of 2018, Trump’s campaign committee and his joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee have spent over $18 million on digital advertising on two of the largest digital platforms, Facebook and Google—almost ten times as much as his nearest Democratic competitor, Elizabeth Warren…
WMP Issue Spotlight
Advertising Issue Spotlight (10/1/18 – 10/31/18) 2018 ElectionsReleases

Advertising Issue Spotlight (10/1/18 – 10/31/18)

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) November 5, 2018 - The Wesleyan Media Project is releasing its fourth post in a series of regularly updated overviews of issue mentions in federal races by state and an interactive visual display of issue discussion from the four main issues featured in our issue spotlights. In both the figure and the table, we show the number of ads that aired in House and Senate races in each state from October 1, 2018, to October 31, 2018. See the WMP Lab Reports section below Table 1 for links to four new reports created in collaboration with students in…
Wesleyan Media Project
November 5, 2018