Mike Bloomberg’s unorthodox presidential campaign has many asking if a billionaire can buy the presidency. He can certainly buy Americans’ Facebook feeds, a Guardian analysis shows.
In the first six weeks of 2020, more than 1.6bn of the 2.4bn presidential campaign ads shown to US Facebook users were from the Bloomberg campaign. Since launching his campaign in mid-November, the former mayor of New York City has spent nearly $45m on Facebook ads – more than all his opponents combined.
And Bloomberg’s spending doesn’t just dwarf that of other Democrats; Donald Trump’s giant re-election effort on Facebook looks paltry in comparison. ...
Facebook ads are just one aspect of Bloomberg’s unusual campaign. (He’s sitting out the first four primary states, for example.) The billionaire has spent more than $250m on television ads and more than $40m on Google and YouTube ads.
His campaign is also pioneering new modes of digital campaigning that are not captured by the transparency tools put in place by Facebook and Google following the 2016 election.
He enlisted the digital marketing firm behind the ill-fated Fyre Festival to run a campaign paying Instagram influencers to post Bloomberg memes to their social media followers, the New York Times reported. He is also paying part-time “deputy digital organizers” to lobby their personal contacts via text message on his behalf, according to the Wall Street Journal. On Thursday, his campaign shared a video on Instagram and Twitter that used edited footage to create a false narrative of what happened in Wednesday’s debate. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/21/mike-bloomberg-facebook-ad-campaign?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other