Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris greets the audience during a campaign rally at the United Auto Workers Local 900 in Wayne, Michigan, on August 8, 2024.
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The Harris campaign announced Saturday that it will book TV shows and appearances worth at least $370 million. online advertising in a critical battleground between Labor Day and the November election.
During the nine-week sprint leading up to Election Day, harris campaign It has set aside $170 million for television advertising and $200 million for digital advertising on platforms such as Hulu, Roku, YouTube, Paramount, Spotify and Pandora.
Nearly a month since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, she has been struggling to define herself to voters ahead of former President Donald Trump.
The Harris campaign’s announcement on Saturday was an effort to secure the first ad spots ahead of the Republican presidential race.
“By booking in advance, the Harris-Walz campaign can be on hand at major sporting events and other events,” Quentin Fulks and Rob Flaherty, Harris’ deputy campaign managers, wrote in a campaign memo. High-rated moments such as national programming secure inventory before selling out.
Those primetime shows include season premieres of TV shows like ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Bachelorette,” as well as live sports such as NFL, WNBA, NBA, NHL and MLB games, the campaign said.
“The closer to the air date, the rates go up and there is less inventory to choose from. So by buying later, Trump is spending more per ad buy and ad delivery becomes more poor, especially for high-rating programs such as live sports,” Fulks and Flaherty added.
The Trump campaign rejected the idea that it needed to go after Harris and said her campaign’s new ad blitz was an example of overspending.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement: “Ads supporting President Trump were actually seen by more people than Harris’ ads, which proves her campaign is spending money Reckless, thoughtless because they don’t know how to run a winning campaign.
The Harris campaign’s choice to spend an additional $30 million on digital advertising reflects the campaign’s growing desire to move beyond traditional television advertising models to reach voters in today’s more fragmented media environment.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid, her campaign has aired more than $33 million worth of television and radio ads, according to the tracking firm advertising influence. The Harris Victory Fund has spent more than $43 million on Facebook and Google ads, the most of any presidential campaign to date.
“We believe we will spend more on digital persuasion media than any political organization,” Fulks and Flaherty wrote in a campaign memo.
The Harris campaign is also running daytime ads on Fox News in an attempt to appeal to “more moderate audiences,” including supporters of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, whom it believes it can convince to vote blue.
The Harris campaign’s fall ad blitz will come in the crucial final mile of the campaign, when the conventions of both parties have concluded and Democrats and Republicans are making final pitches to voters in swing states.
Compared to Biden’s 2020 campaign, the Harris campaign said its TV ad spending doubled in Pennsylvania, more than doubled in Wisconsin, quadrupled in Georgia and increased in Nevada six times.
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