Just another boring week in politics
Doomscroll 10.8.23
Hello again and happy Sunday. Was this email forwarded to you? Welcome. Run, don’t walk to smash that subscribe button!
One Question
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about TikTok. It’s time to settle the debate right here, right now. Once and for all. Ready? Two-thirds of you are Team Haley. One-third of you are Team Ramaswamy. BOOM. The anti-TikTok-ers win. Time to vacate the TikTok app.
Here are a few comments I got:
I’m not certain it’s the devil, but ain’t a user of it nor do we spend $$ on ads there.
Haley is a massive lib, but she’s right about Tik Tok. It’s a national security threat and we should blow it off. This is a bipartisan issue.
If you don't think Facebook and Google know as much about you as TikTok does, you're not paying attention. Besides, if the ChiComms know that my TikTok stream is watching comedians, learning how to make bread and getting tips on growing basil, not sure that really threatens national security.
You can want to ban TikTok while also using it (on a completely different phone that has no access to your bank accounts etc). Gen Z spends a ton of time on TikTok. Gen Z also has a number of new voters. We can't let the left fill that void. Go to where the voters are. Otherwise, you're ceding ground to the Dems. It's really that simple.
As always, I appreciate the comments and feedback! This week’s One Question is one that was submitted to me by a loyal reader, and I am more than happy to throw it to you good folks. It’s this: Who has good graphic design in the political space? Where do you get inspiration and what tools do you use?
This is a great question. We may not all be graphic designers, but we certainly know a good display ad or social media graphic when we see one, right? So feel free to send some high-fives (or some shade) and let’s talk design! P.S. If you’d like to submit a question for the group, HMU at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com.
Who’s Doing What
--Barbarians at the Gaetz
This week America got a good look at how the sausage is made in Washington and I, for one, don’t think anyone digested it very well. Did anyone need to see that? I think not. But it is interesting to see how some GOPers capitalized off the successful effort to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. First up: Matt Gaetz (duh). The one and only. From what I could tell, the dude sent several fundraising emails - including one he sponsored with Parler. Actually, I got multiple sends of the exact same email and I opened every single one of them, so he must have done several list rentals. Didn’t get any P2P though, and as I’ve noted before, I’m on a shit ton of lists. Is it just me or does anyone else find it interesting that he fundraises with Revv and not WinRed?
Next up: Nancy Mace. Not gonna lie, this one was a real head-scratcher for me, but they don’t pay me the big bucks to write about political strategy - just the digital repercussions! Anywho, our girl from the low country was READY. By Thursday morning she had redirected her campaign website to a WinRed page asking people to stand with her for bucking the DC establishment. She then promoted the heck out of that in all her media hits. Bravo - way to make the digital team happy, even if you accidentally did it from the Cannon building which is a big no-no! Side note: I did also lol at this CNN appearance and her claims about her fundraising being “threatened.” Bless her heart (I’m allowed to say that since I’m a South Carolinian). No lawmaker is entitled to financial support. If you do something outside groups and donors don’t like, the checks stop, right? Isn’t that how this works? Asking for a friend. Anyway, I appreciate the hustle.
It’s also interesting to note the GOP-on-GOP fighting around this whole thing. Americans for Tax Reform, for instance, immediately launched anti-Gaetz ads, slamming him for siding with Democrats. American Action Network had also launched an ad thanking Speaker McCarthy and House conservatives. Womp womp.
P.S. Let’s hear it for the WSJ Editorial Board:
--Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn raked in $2.7 million in donations in the third quarter, more than doubling her Democrat opponent, the *famous* Gloria Johnson. Not bad! Marsha for Senate and Blackburn Tennessee Victory Fund ran several fundraising ads last month, including one direct-to-camera video in which she calls Johnson a “socialist,” “as woke as they come,” and slams her for knowing “all the liberal bigwigs in Tennessee.” ::heart eyes:: She also launched a “Cowboy Boot Drink Cooler” that I am gonna order ASAP. Go Marsha!
--Battle in the Bluegrass State
RGA affiliate Kentucky Values is up with a new TV ad in the state, tying Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear to Joe Biden. It’s a pretty good spot, but it doesn’t look like it’s on Google or Facebook (yet). On Google, the group is still running a pretty generic ad that accuses Beshear of lying and ruining Kentucky. Ok…All recent polling indicates GOP candidate Daniel Cameron could use all the help he can get. (Woof). Pro-Beshear group Defending Bluegrass Values is back up with ads tying Cameron to former Gov. Matt Bevin and that is NOT good given how unpopular he was when voters rejected him for a second term four years ago. Team Cameron is up with a new ad hitting Beshear for kids falling behind in schools…but is it enough? GOPers ran with this kind of messaging a ton in the midterms and it didn’t seem to resonate very much. I know scrolling ad libraries only provides a snapshot of the overall health of a campaign’s digital presence, but from i can tell…Team Daniel Cameron is getting smoked online with just a few short weeks left until Election Day.
2024 Roundup
Tell It Like It Is PAC is up with an ad going after Trump on he debt. See it here.
Speaking of Chris Christie, he started fundraising this week off the news that the RNC forced Fox to cancel his joint debate/TV appearance with Vivek Ramaswamy. Read about it here.
Speaking of fundraising, the Trump campaign reported raising $45.5 million in Q3.
Vivek Ramaswamy promoted a video on Facebook of him talking about why kicking out Speaker McCarthy was absolutely to “sow chaos”, but that’s not such a bad thing. See it here.
Tim Scott has a new ad hitting Biden for caving on China. See it here.
SFA Fund is running an ad about Nikki Haley’s proposal to impose term limits, and features a clip of her calling the Senate the “most privileged nursing home in the country.” Watch it here.
Looks like NBC is set to host the third debate in Miami.
Who’s Spending Where
From 9/28 - 10/4, the top Republican spender on Facebook ads was Americans for Prosperity. They spent about $122,000 on a bunch of awareness and lead-gen ads. AFP Action came in second place with $108,000 on more anti-Trump ads (wonder how those are working out?). PragerU spent $71,273 on ads for lead-gen and promoting Prager content. American Action Network spent about $64,000 on pro-Kevin McCarthy ads (RIP). Rounding out the top 5 is Ron DeSantis for President, with $52,000 on donation and lead-gen ads.
During that same time period, AFP Action was one again the top Republican spender on Google, with $96,000 on their anti-Trump ads. Make America Great Again Inc came in second with about $51,000 on ads. SFA Inc. spent $44,000 on ads to support Nikki Haley. Trust in the Mission PAC and Kentucky Values round out the top five with $38,000 and $34,000, respectively.
P2P
Industry Watch
File this under “tell me something I don’t know.” Per Axios this week, social media referral traffic to news sites has plummeted. I guess this impacts publishers more than it impacts campaigns per se, but if there’s one takeaway I guess it would be this: We know that the algorithms hate news links, so there’s more pressure on social media managers/operatives to come up with and post more original content. So: more work for us. For our friends on the other side of the aisle, I’m sure this is causing their misinformation spidey senses to go into overdrive. Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s not something I’m losing a lot of sleep over at the moment!
Kyle Tharp touched on this in his issue of FWIW on Friday, and asked a bunch of questions:
But is a complete withdrawal from news and politics even possible? What does it mean for the media industry, which has struggled for years to build new revenue models in the internet age? And what does it mean for political outsiders and first-time candidates, who have historically relied on viral online moments to raise money and build an audience of supporters?
All great questions. As for that last one, I’d go back to what I said above. I *think* It mostly means every single candidate is going to have to get serious about creating their own content shops to churn out original graphics, memes, videos, etc. In the social media world, content is king - and that’s never been more true. Perhaps we’ll also start seeing a rise in staffing positions that aren’t just “social media manager,” but “content creator” in the political digital space.
The Grapevine
StackAdapt is hiring! Want to be a senior programmatic account manager? Apply here. This is specifically for the GOP ads team!
Congrats to everyone on Cygnal’s 30 Under 30 list! Special shout-out to Politicoin’s Ken Mika and RumbleUp’s Sarah Porter!
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Fav recipe that uses pumpkin? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
This Semafor piece about Democrat ads caught my eye this week:
The peer-reviewed study, set to be released soon in the American Political Science Review, examined 146 experiments on 617 advertisements Democratic campaigns produced in 2018 and 2020. The ads were tested with 500,000 survey respondents on a research platform called Swayable. The study’s authors then asked independent political scientists to tag the advertisements by elements of their style and substance in what appears to be the largest randomly-controlled test of American political ads ever conducted.
The puzzling finding: Some ads were markedly more successful than others, but there was “no persistent pattern to what worked best,” according to a presentation on the data by Swayable co-founder and CEO James Slezak, who is one of the study’s authors.
From the other side of the tracks:
I loved this tweet from the guy who runs social media for McDonalds. Anyone who’s ever run a social media account knows this to be true - AND knows the struggle of having to explain this reality to the candidate/campaign/org/etc.
There is NO magic formula for going viral or having a piece of content pop online. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t experiment, observe, and take notes. But virality is 100% unpredictable.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!