Trump's TikTok Debut
Doomscroll 6.9.2024
Happy Sunday, and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll.
I’m Andrew Mullins, and I worked at RGA with Amanda during the 2017-2018 cycle. I’ve been around the block in digital, particularly paid advertising, and have worked with candidates at the senate, gubernatorial, and presidential level (I’ve run ads for 2 presidential campaigns).
Alright, let’s get into it.
One Question
So last week’s One Question was about Trump, and how the verdict affected Trump’s fundraising haul among down-ballot candidates. Answers were sparse, but we got a few good insights:
I think it's going to make the pool smaller for the down ballot crowd, Trump has sucked up enough of it prior to this.
I'd love to think Team Trump will put this $ to good use but... lol
My personal take? A rising tide lifts all boats, and every single one of you readers who touches digital fundraising knows what I’m talking about.
Now here’s where that gets crazy. There was this old WinRed stat that 95%+ of WinRed donors, vote (which I confirmed with someone in the know). As Madison highlighted last week, 30% of Trump’s donors from that $54M haul were brand new to WinRed.
So if we’re successfully driving net new donors to the party, statistically speaking, we also just saw a haul of ultra high prop GOP voters. This could also correlate to a higher voter share, and allow the party to spend more money turning out the voters that weren’t convinced by the conviction.
Enthusiasm is there. People are leaned in. It’s time to convince voters to invest in the party!
But for this week’s one-question, I’m going heavy on ads.
Andrew’s Rant on Ads
This past week, I talked to an industry insider who showed me the math on the uncomfortable topic of ad margins. As someone that’s been involved in digital ad execution for around a decade, it’s fascinating to see how companies make money at both ends of the ads equation.
Most (if not all) political shops make money by charging a pre-negotiated margin (or retainer) on an ad buy. However, some agencies out there contract with murky platforms and managed service vendors that are taking advantage of political scale, and charging additional cuts that can eat into up to 40% of an ad buy. On the flip side, dollars trusted with agencies that are executing in-house can be up to 41% more efficient than dollars going towards agencies that resell their work.
What this means is at the end of the day, when a client wants to spend, say, $100K on a campaign, only around 51% ($51K!) of that budget actually goes towards buying ads - aka “working media”. And that’s not including the other fees in the media buying ecosystem that we don’t see. A few of my favorites that you probably didn’t realize you’re paying for when you use a DSP: Bid Shading, Ad Exchange Fees, SSP Fees, and Ad Servering Fees. (One study floating around indicates that for some bids, as little as $0.02 of every dollar spent actually goes towards paying for an impression!).
This is a gigantic business opportunity for ad tech companies, and one of the many reasons why a lot of political shops are getting bombarded by random vendors from New York every 4 years… and then getting shocked when they realize they actually have to run political ads with content they might not agree with.
Why am I ranting about this? AdImpact is projecting that political ad spend will hit around $10.2B this cycle. If we aren’t putting in the extra effort to buy our ads efficiently, that’s a whole lot of money that’s gonna get wasted, and a whole lot of voters that aren’t getting talked to.
TLDR: Relying heavily on managed service ad buying (and reselling our business) is making ad dollars incredibly inefficient… but not everyone does it. My advice to candidates and committees out there is to find a good agency that executes media in-house and ask LOTS of questions about where your dollars are going. (If you want to learn more, I actually went deep on this in a Webinar with Powers Interactive).
So to end on a good note, I want to hear from you. Which ad platforms or ad tech companies are actually crushing it this cycle and deserve props? Let’s give a shoutout to the good guys out there.
Who’s Doing What
—TikTok Time
The big news of the week is that Donald Trump is now on TikTok. Personally, I like this move. It shows that our party is doing what it takes to talk to new voters, and meeting voters where they spend the most time (I know Amanda will disagree with me for saying this).
We all know this is massive news, especially the fact that 60%+ of Americans are on TikTok. I guess this probably means that our boomer relatives are about to join since TikTok is officially the fastest-growing app for the Baby Boomer generation.
In other hilarious news, Donald Trump already has over 10x as many followers on TikTok as Joe Biden. There’s actually a live Rumble stream dedicated to tracking this follower count.
So when will TikTok start accepting political ads???
—Brutal Takedown
Team Trump (via Trump National Committee JFC) is running an amazing ad on YouTube, highlighting media figures calling him a “convicted felon” in unison… and it ends with Biden smiling at the camera.
Brutal ad. Amazing work, Team Trump.
—WinRed Crushes ActBlue in Visits
Per similar web data, traffic to WinRed absolutely crushed traffic to ActBlue this past week. I don’t think this should come as a shock to any of us, but I think this is a clear indicator that this election is in full swing… and if you haven’t invested in a top-notch fundraising strategy to capture and remarket to this traffic, you’re already behind.
—What’s Going on with Ad Spend?
As an advertiser, I think it’s interesting (and kind of sad) that even though the Trump campaign trounced Biden in fundraising last week, our side is still getting slaughtered in digital ad parity.
Conventional wisdom dictates that if you’re seeing insane returns, you should double down on ad spend - otherwise, we’re leaving potential new donors on the table (remember that most people donate numerous times over their lifecycle in a campaign).
It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out!
—Cringe Alert
Jimmy Kimmel is now signing fundraising texts for Joe Biden…
2024 Roundup
This is where I make note of a few other things that caught my eye this week.
New Jersey Senator Bob Menedez reportedly “has no campaign staff and is managing his own race” now.
Ipsos launched a fascinating study on how the media you consume skews your political outlook. Read the highlights here.
Texas had their GOP primary runoffs last week, and the turnout was…yikes.
Donald Trump dropped his list of VP contenders. Read here.
Who’s Spending Where
Amanda’s Out, so I get to play around with changing up the format this week.
Meta
The thing that stands out to me here is how badly our party is getting trounced on digital investment. 4 out of the top 10 disclaimers on the GOP side are for-profit merch companies selling knock-off MAGA hats and coins. Some will say that the well has run dry… But that’s very much up for debate.
Biden Victory Fund, meanwhile, has spent $2,258,638 in the past 7 days. More than the top 10 advertisers on this list combined.
The good news is that where we’re lagging on Meta, we’re looking much better on Google. (Biden Victory Fund was $1.34M during this span).
While I was cruising the Google Ads library (as we all do), I was jarred by this ad from “Faith Voters for Good.” Would love to know how this performed.
X Honorable Mention
Bravo to the NRCC for this eye-catching creative, landing page, and program. Voters love contests, and they love a chance to win something (and engage with a candidate!) in return for their donation. I like this tactic, and I like this creative.
Industry Watch
Instagram Is Considering Non-Skippable Story Ads
From The Verge:
Instagram is testing “ad breaks” that force you to stop and look at an ad for a period of time before you can continue scrolling. Several X and Reddit users reported seeing the feature, and Instagram spokesperson Matthew Tye confirmed to The Verge that ad breaks are being tested. Tye said Instagram would “provide updates should this test result in any formal product changes.”
LOL. This reminds me of how Amazon’s Audible has been testing in-audiobook ads.
The Trade Desk Ranks Publishers
Our friends at The Trade Desk published a fascinating list of the top 100 publishers on the web. It’s worth a read (check it out here). Not sure how I feel about the murky criteria after peeling back a few layers, but I genuinely applaud the innovation!
Facebook is trying to claw back the youths
According to Axios, Facebook is self-aware enough to realize that teens and Gen Z users don’t really like them. So they’re going to make some changes:
Facebook is focused on three major changes to win over Gen Z.
Feed: The company has refocused its core product suite to focus on discovery of content relevant to younger audiences, including shoppable goods in its Marketplace feature, dating, groups and events. It's shuttered features that weren't core to social discovery, such as audio and news products.
Reels: It's put a greater emphasis on short-form video within Facebook via Reels, and it's made it easier for users to share that type of content privately via messaging. Private sharing on Facebook has grown 80% year over year, Alison says.
Creators: The company developed a professional mode to make the app more creator-friendly. It said more than 100 million daily active users globally follow at least one professional page.
I’m not sure what to make of it, but I think it’s hysterical that we could have a reality where boomers are flocking to TikTok and Zoomers are flocking to Facebook.
Google’s Going to Start Placing Ads In AI Search Results
Absolute shocker here.
Advertisers will get a front-row seat to Google’s generative AI search features.
AI Overviews will have ads above, below, and within AI-generated search results, Rachel Melgaard, Google’s director of global search, said on Tuesday at a press roundtable ahead of the company’s Marketing Live event.
What I will say about this is that if you’re not comfortable with AI already, you’d better get there. Ad buying is going to be super AI heavy next cycle, if it isn’t already this cycle.
The Grapevine
The Daily Signal, an alt-media publisher from The Heritage Foundation, is going independent.
Shoutout to email king Austin Boedigheimer for giving digital fundraising nerds the content we didn’t know we needed.
This NOTUS study on the drop in small-dollar fundraising during Q1 of this cycle is scary, and important to check out.
Targeted Victory’s Zac Moffat says the GOP doesn’t innovate “like it used to” and that “most of the innovation that we’re finding is internal.” Read it here.
Thomas Peters was on Donahue’s Campaign War Stories podcast, and it was super inspiring.
Convergence is hiring for a Client Strategy Manager, Campaign HQ is hiring for an Operations Coordinator, Direct Persuasion is hiring a Junior Analyst, and IMGE is hiring for a graphic designer and marketing strategist, and Politicoin is hiring an Account Associate.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
NGP VAN, a Democrat tech company, is now processing donations, as of this past Wednesday, making it a competitor to ActBlue.
It’s long been talked about how ActBlue has seriously lagged in the Democrat fundraising space. While they have a huge number of unique donors, the platform hasn’t really changed much since 2016… unlike WinRed, which is rolling out feature after feature.
It’ll be interesting to see how this galvanizes the donation processing space on the Dem side. Will they see better innovation? The Biden campaign seems to think so. As of last November, they were considering ditching ActBlue.
This quote got me:
“NGP VAN is undercutting ActBlue on price by 0.70 percent — charging a flat fee of 3.25 percent per transaction compared with 3.95 percent from ActBlue. Moreover, NGP VAN said in a release said that its donation forms “perform as well or better than the competition.”
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!