The gold standard source for monitoring Presidential campaign TV ad spending is data provided by CMAG/Kantar Media on a weekly basis. CMAG/Kantar Media is like the Nielsen Ratings for campaign TV. A full accounting for our purposes is provided by the Associated Press (AP) wire service and found here:
The data was last updated on October 17. The site provides data and graphics, state by state, for each campaign since January 1, 2016. A veritable treasure house to walk through. There are three weeks to go n the campaign until Election Day.
This post was inspired by a slew of sunny stories from Trump’s campaign on September 23, 2016. Here’s one:
by Major Garrett CBS News September 23, 2016:
Donald Trump ups ad spending to $140M, expands into 3 more states
Donald Trump will spend $100 million on TV ads and $40 million on digital advertising in the final six weeks of the campaign and is expanding the scope of its advertising to include three states it now deems competitive, CBS News has learned. The $140 million investment in by far the largest so far for Trump’s campaign.
Senior Trump advisers said the campaign has already paid for $15 million of the $100 million in new TV ad purchases and will book the remaining $85 million in the coming days. Because Trump will book the ad purchases this late in the campaign, the rates will be more costly than Hillary Clinton’s ad rates purchased much earlier in the campaign. That will mean less saturation of the Trump TV message but the investment is nevertheless much larger than Trump has put forth so far.
Trump is adding Wisconsin, New Mexico and Maine to the existing 10 states where Trump ads are running. The campaign started with four battleground states and has gradually expanded as polls have tightened. The states where Trump ads will run will include Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
On September 23, the Trump Campaign made a major media splash with the powerful announcement that they were going to make a spectacular TV ad blitz to close out the last six weeks of the campaign and spend $100 million dollars in key Battleground states. At the announcement the campaign said it had already booked $15 million in Ads to run as soon as the following week. Their solemn promise was to dedicate $16 million per week to get their message out. This was welcome news to the small dollar donors providing the bulk of the giving to Trump.
Despite his initial flashy promise to self fund his campaign, whatever it took, Trump had grown weary. He did loan some $54 million to his campaign by June 2016, reserving the option to pay himself back. He decided or was shamed into converting those loans into an actual donation before the convention in July, when some Big Dollar contributors balked at this back door repayment loophole.
Since June Trump, has given roughly $2 million per month as a matching donation against small online contributions. Hardly the overflowing money generosity of a multi-billionaire who could just write a check for a Presidential campaign (expected to cost at least $300-$00 million on the cheap end).
Trump’s next assurance to his faithful was that he had lots of very rich friends just waiting to line up and donate whatever ($5 or $10 million at a clip) whenever Trump made a phone call. The green waterfall of Trump’s moneyed friends did not cascade.
Despite Trump’s making good on the loan to cash conversion, traditional Big Money Republican donors have shied away, sat on their proverbial hands, or turned their backs on Trump as a Presidential candidate. Their political money in 2016 has gone overwhelmingly to down ballot races.
So with six weeks to go, Trump’s campaign literally depends for gas money on the small dollar (<$200) donations from the ordinary people who back him.
They have responded in droves, despite the financial faltering of Trump, his well heeled rich friends, and the traditional Republican Big Money folks, who Trump delights in mocking and insulting.
Trump’s promise of a bright shiny media explosion in the critical states lifted the spirits of supporters disheartened by his lagging poll performance during August after both national conventions.
The Ad Story Set-Up
Most folks know that Trump is politically inexperienced. He announces it at every opportunity, and revels in claiming to be an outsider when it suits him. He has also shown himself to be financially naïve and ill-informed about the money requirements and burdens of a national Presidential campaign. He dismissed the advice of those few people he tolerated around him that had any real grasp of the subject before July.
A full-on contested Presidential campaign costs $750 million -$1 billion dollars in 2016. Even if you can cage tons of free media by phoning in five interviews a day and holding continuous rallies to keep the cameras rolling hot, it will still cost a bare minimum of $300-$400 million in actual dollars.
Two of the mostly costly campaign investments are TV advertising and ground game expenses (campaign staff, offices, volunteer coordination, polling and data analytics). Trump decided early in to out-source nearly all the ground game to the RNC.
He badly underestimated the usefulness and ultimate need for TV ads in the General Election phase, after the Republican nomination was won. TV executives are not so naïve in their core business wheelhouse. Trump may be entertaining for ratings jazz up to a point, but when it comes to nut-cutting time business is business, after all. Ads cost money. Cash on the barrelhead. No family discount pricing, or trades for product placement and name recognition, and no credit lines to be paid sometime later after negotiation. Trump doesn’t do much cash business this way, and his Art of the Deal is a non-starter for the TV political ad folks.
Thanks to the hard work of the folks at Kantar media who track campaign ad spending, we have some actual numbers to compare against the golden promises of Trump and his campaign.
Real World TV Ad Numbers: The Stuff, Not the Fluff
Here’s a chart, using CMAG/Kantar data for each week beginning Sunday August 7, until the latest week ending Saturday October 15. The CMAG data are published very quickly, with only about a 2-day delay from real time. Their numbers and response time is like the body’s fast twitch muscle fibers. An asset for American democracy.
This in contrast to the month long (or more) delay in reporting official campaign financial disclosures. Admittedly the latter are more complex to gather and assess, but the delay allows much more opportunity for misleading claims and fugabooing* about fund raising success, as we have all witnessed, particularly this year.
The time disclosure drag has always been there. The exciting newer element in 2016 is the wholesale misrepresentation and outright fabrication of the totals. Trump is a leading practitioner of this slinky dark art. In the past, most politicians were afraid of getting caught fudging numbers ultimately reported to Federal Election authorities.
Trump is not inhibited in this regard. Trump has shown the way of sucking the juice out of positive claims, and later walking back the hype after the fact, when few people are paying attention and there is no Press spotlight. That is, in fact, one of the more dangerous aspects of his political method so far. He corrupts confidence in the statements of our so-called leaders, and then cites political lies as his reason for running. This is the new Political Lizzie Borden move, a la Trump style.
Trump has no purchase or sway over TV ad spending reporting. In fact he never mentions it. Investigative stories are all after the fact, and not presented on Fox News or Hannity’s show. Trump has already basked in the glory of his empty promises and moved on.
Here’s a little bit of objective transparency and accountability. Some sunshine in a dark and murky place somewhere in Trump Tower.
Chart of Broken Promises
The following chart is a complete summary of CMAG/Kantar Media data for both campaigns for the last two months, week by week. It gives total TV ad spending (network, cable, and regional networks) in millions of dollars spent, and number of ads purchased. I have added a cost per ad comparison for each week.
The website above also provides complete advertising data back to January 1, 2016, and state by state breakdowns for each candidate as well. It is a fascinating collection of important information and I highly recommend frequent visits for anyone interested in the mechanics of how a presidential campaign is managed and resources allocated.
Here goes.
The September 23 Big Announcement of an aggressive push shouted about a $!5 million stimulus for the week of September 26–October 1, the opening segment of the last six weeks in the campaign. What happened?
Did Trump keep his promise to his small donors. Of course not.
Trump ad expenditures were $4.42 million. Not chopped liver by any means, but about 75% less than promised. O.K. so there must have been some start up glitches to work out. How about Week 2 of the Blitz, October 2 to October 8? Same story. Exaggerations and broken promises. This time $6.73 million. Better than Week 1, but still 60% less than promised. That record is not even good enough for incompetent government workers to fall behind in their work goals.
Well, surely by Week 3 everything was on track. Sorry again. An increase to $10.72 million during that week, so the under performance is now only about 30% less than that promised.
So, after 50% of all the time remaining has passed for the knockout media blitz, only 20% of the promised money has been spent by Trump on behalf his followers.
In a fair and balanced news environment this sort of laggard and haphazard performance would be tantamount to political malpractice, and the team in charge would be fired.
Not gonna happen. Eventually, someone will figure out that the New York Times was cooking the books, and Clinton’s email server leaks prove there is a conspiracy to rig the election by lying about Trump’s media buys.
All of this would be bad news enough for Trump supporters. But it is not the first time, Trump has fugabooed his media commitment to score cheap publicity.
As recently as August 29 there was another bold Trump media announcement of a forward leaning ad push, a $10 million dollar thrust for the week of September 4-11 on top of a $4.8 million week already committed for August 28-September 3.
Trump Spends $10 Million In TV Ad Blitz. (Aug 29, 2016):
In a potentially positive sign for radio, Donald Trump has placed his largest general election ad blitz to date, committing $10 million for TV ads in nine battleground states. The campaign, which addresses the economy and runs over the next week or so, is an expansion of a $4.8 million TV buy Trump placed earlier in August focused on immigration. While so far confined to TV, political ad experts suggest it’s only a matter of time before Trump expands his spending to radio.
The new spot, entitled “Two Americas: Economy,” enlarges Trump’s TV buy from four to nine states.
Trump launched his first major ad campaign since clinching the Republican nomination in mid-August with a $4.84 million 10-day TV ad flight in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Now he’s spreading his message to New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado. Trump trails Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton in most of the battleground states where the ads are running.
What happened? Trump spent $7.31 million, only 30% less than he promised. Grab the applause, duck out on the promise. Use the money from small donors, keep the Trump funds powder-dry.
Promise after broken promise to the Little People (extremely rich-person speak). Exaggerations upon exaggerations. Misrepresentations piled on misrepresentations. The complex financial events are too complicated for your average citizen to fully comprehend, just like Trump’s personal income taxes. Just ask sons Eric and Donny Junior, they’ll tell you. Don’t worry your poor little heads about it.
What you can say, with some certainty, is that Trump is not signing his personal Form 1040 Tax Return in the upper picture. His pen and the signature scribble beneath it are located in the wrong place. Trump is apparently signing his personal 1040 in the lower picture. Note the correct location of the pen and scribble over the usual signature block. I also count at least 7 yellowish sign here stickies in the bottom picture. I don’t know about you, but my personal 1040 has one place for a signature on page 1 of the 2 page form. Seven signature stickies suggest some other tax paperwork is included in Trump’s Big Pile.]
In Montana they have a favorite expression to describe cowboy poseurs. All Hat, No Cattle. In truth, this phrase may be a linguistic inheritance from the cattle families from Texas who moved to Montana during the cattle drives in the 19th century.**
To be fair, Trump’s overblown media claims of a Big Ad Push are not completely empty. He is more All Hat, and a Few Cows & Calves. But not Big Sky worthy.
Trump’s Ads: The Rest of the Story
In honor of legendary conservative broadcaster Paul Harvey, whose famous phrase was, “And now, for the rest of the story.” (1976-2009)
While this sequence of events is already enough to give Trump’s decent hard working small donors the heartburn of broken promises and dashed hoes for 2016, It is not the worst news.
The campaign to campaign comparisons show how threadbare and mismanaged the whole Trump media ad enterprise really is.
A few items. You can work out more disturbing trends for yourself by inspection and a little arithmetic.
In the first week in August, Trump ran Zero ads. That is none, nada, a goose egg, blanksville. Clinton ran more than 9,000 ads that week, and spent almost $13 million dollars to define Trump without rebuttal.
Since the ‘real’ start of the campaign is after Labor Day, let’s focus there. During this traditional window, Trump has aired about 31,000 ads, while Clinton has shown 135,000 ads, more than 4 times as many. In Trump’s best week, the campaign ran about 10,000 ads; Clinton has run about 20,000 per week every week since Labor Day (6 consecutive shots). In the two months that Trump has been running ads since the conventions (he only started on August 15, a month after his nomination), in total he has been outspent on TV by $125 million ($166 million for Clinton to $41 million for Trump).
Trump’s Pitiful TV Ad Campaign Distribution, Mid-September 2016
Worse, his lowest ad activity came during the week of September 18-24, just before his Big Announcement . His expenditures had fallen by more than 90% in just the previous two weeks. His bold promise was delivered like a campaign electric shock. Even so, after three more weeks, he is just now reaching where Clinton began on August 7, and she hasn’t looked back. Ups and downs during the final run for the gold are a very bad sign for any professional athlete, politicians included. Momentum is squandered, and precious vital energy is wasted, not to be recovered.
To an honest outside observer, it sure looks like the Trump campaign was running out of money towards the middle of September and was choking off pay as you go expenses like TV ad time, which they couldn’t cadge on credit or promises of future goodies during a Trump Administration. Clinton’s budget is a steady base drumbeat with significant increases the whole time, more than doubling from $10 million per week to last week’s top $24 million.
Trump’s More Reasonable TV Ad Campaign Distribution, Mid-October 2016
Trump is being outspent week after week by 100% to 500%, even leaving off his terrible blow out bad week, and he is down by amounts from $6 to $15 million per week, every week. Horrible.
Week after week. Still no $16 million dollar major pulse. Ten separate chances to win over ten separate weeks. A perfect shutout. Nothing for 10. You don’t stay in the Big Show with this kind of record. Not even close. A Loser Supreme. A bitter trail of broken promises to his most loyal supporters.
All of this might still be tolerable if Trump were leading in the polls in the 10 or 12 states where he was advertising. He is not. He may be slightly ahead in Iowa and Ohio, but he is behind everywhere else. Nor is his ground game better positioned than the Democrats in any of these states.
Finally, the lack of professional planning and understanding is evident in the average dollar cost per ad. Trump didn’t reserve significant ad space far enough in advance to get the best prices. Clinton did.
So, Trump’s average cost per ad is $1,700 versus Clinton’s $1,000, a 70% difference in the wrong direction. In plain English, this means that the Democrats get 70% more bang for every ad buck on average than Trump’s campaign, and Clinton had a bucket full more ad dollars to begin with.
To highlight the veritable juicy plum in the mix, Trump spent $6,500 per ad during the week of September 18-September 24, his nadir ad operation. This is more than 6 times what he should have been able to negotiate with good business practices. It also smacks of a fairly desperate attempt to conceal a political mismanagement error from outside discovery.
This isn’t some sort of a media conspiracy. This is Trump’s business fecklessness and incompetence on full display. It is essentially a straight brand of political malpractice. It is an entirely self-induced crisis. And the penalties for incompetence are being paid by the hard working Americans who donated after tax dollars and were deceived by Trump’s grandiose promises, and his piss poor political business performance.
Broken Promises Summary
I could go on, but it is altogether too depressing. All hat, No Cattle indeed.
How could anyone expect him to run an entire country with this sort of pre-employment job interview trial run flop? He can’t even get a fair discount on TV ads, a subject area where he is supposed to be a world class expert, to hear him tell it.
The ordinary folks funding his effort are screwed again, and not by the Establishment. They believed with all their hearts, and didn’t pay attention to the financial prospectus and fine print before handing over their money.
Trump will no doubt fly off in his 757 jet to better vistas, after a well earned rest at his New York penthouse or his Florida mansion, to play some golf, and make some more insanely lucrative Trump deals. Trump always knows when to Get Out of Dodge, ahead of the Sheriff.
Oh well…
* Fugaboo. In Louisiana parlance, a snookering of a part or the whole. Our State Legislature is a rich source of fugaboo stories. Read about one instance here. I don’t know if citizens of other states are quite so blessed as we are.
** Respect to Montana’s Big Sky country and their pristine fly fishing venues. This expression usage was prompted by something I read recently in a series of five novels by Montana outdoor writer and novelist Keith McCafferty. They are The Royal Wulff Murders, The Grey Ghost Murders, Dead Man’s Fancy, Crazy Mountain Kiss, and Buffalo Jump Blues. They are rich in accurate fly-fishing detail, Montana landscapes, and a fair bit of Indian background. I have found them very enjoyable as an anodyne from too much Trump immersion recently. McCafferty’s novels are all available at Amazon.com. I am not a fly-fisherman, but experts say his work is a worthy addition to the large fly-fishing literature over the years, instructional, inspirational, and recreational. Serious fly-fishers and interested amateurs take note.
No disrespect is meant to the real cowboys of Texas.
*** Yes, I know the average cost per ad depends in part on the size of the media market and its location, as well as prior reservation. However, we are talking about thousands of ads taken together, so many of these distinctions will flatten out in a summary average. This is the miracle power of statistical measures of Central Tendency, which makes these comparisons not as foolish or inaccurate as they might seem at first glance. Think of it not as apples and oranges, but a comparison of two different mixed fruit salads. You may not care for a mixed fresh fruit salad compared to just apples, but it is a healthy food choice nonetheless.