Billionaire Presidential Candidates Invest in Unprecedented Ad Spending

Story by Inside Radio

Billionaire presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have spent so much money on political advertising that it’s making industry insiders’ heads spin. According to the latest Ad Age Datacenter analysis of political ad spending in partnership with Kantar/CMAG, the two have both already spent more than $100 million on ad spending across broadcast TV, cable and radio as well as Facebook. Considering Bloomberg only joined the race on Nov. 24, the pace of his spending is near-flabbergasting.

Homing in on just radio, Tom Steyer For President ran 5,547 ads the week of Dec. 23-29 to land at No. 98 among the top radio advertisers, as tracked by Media Monitors.

For context, AdAge cites that President Trump has spent just over $24.8 million on TV, radio, and Facebook, while all the other major candidates—Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, etc.—have spent $89.5 million on the same media combined.

This means that more than two-thirds of the $345.5 million in total campaign ad outlay tracked by the Datacenter study is coming from just two high-rolling candidates.

For further context, Politico points out that the amount of money Bloomberg has spent in just one month roughly equates to what Obama spent over the course of the entirety of his general election campaign.

“We’ve never seen spending like this in a presidential race,” Jim McLaughlin, a Republican political strategist who worked as a consultant for Bloomberg’s mayoral bids in New York is quoted as saying in Politico. “He has a limitless budget,” he said of Bloomberg.

And while these two candidates obviously hope their immense ad buys will sway voters, the two remain, at least at present, stuck in single digits in the polls. Christian Heiens, a political marketer with Saber Communications, a right-leaning media buying agency, told Politico he isn’t convinced Bloomberg and Steyer will be able to rise significantly or consistently through their spending.

“After you see the same TV ad 10 times, it’s not going to have as big an impact,” Heiens said. “And that’s not just in politics, that’s in anything in marketing.”