You’ve likely heard of the Himself campaign’s “big move” in digital media advertising. Bloomberg and the Washington Post report that the campaign spent $8.2 million, half of its July expenses, on online advertising, dwarfing the Clinton campaign’s spending in digital ads.
While the numbers are impressive at first glance, looking deeper reveals a failing campaign, one that was never built to succeed in the first place.
The 8 mil went to one firm, Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm based in San Antonio, Texas. The product of a merger between an older, successful graphic design company and an up and coming digital media marketer, Giles-Parscale appears to be a solid company with a lot of satisfied, largely regional, customers. Their website designs are serviceable if somewhat unimaginative.
Beginning in 2011, the company began doing work for some of Himself’s operations — websites for Trump International Realty, Himself, Jr’s foundation, one of the golf courses. While they’d never done political work, Himself insisted on using Giles-Parscale in June of 2015 for his presidential bid and eventually named firm co-founder Brad Parscale the campaign’s digital director.
About the time 1) his poll numbers began crashing, and 2) he started raking in a lot more of other people’s money, Himself’s campaign started its digital rampup with his longtime cyber-mercs Giles-Parscale. Digital ad-trackers Moat Pro noted an upturn of buys beginning in Mid-June.
Now, with the news that half the campaign’s July budget was dedicated to revving up online advertising, the Clinton campaign should be terrified, right?
Not if it’s looking at the budget of Himself’s contractor and not his campaign. Because just about the time those rather pedestrian digital ads started appearing, Giles-Parscale announced it had hired 100 new workers to keep up with the needs of Himself’s campaign.
So a great deal of the campaign’s “big investment” in digital media wasn’t spent getting ads on more sites, placing issue ads in related videos, etc. It was spent on people.
People to produce content and research demographics and track interests to actions and tailor messages to audiences. You know, like the Clinton campaign.
Bloomberg’s story notes that the Clinton campaign spent a paltry $132,000 on digital advertising in July. What they didn’t mention is that the Clinton crowd could spend that money just placing the ads. They didn’t have to spend millions producing them or figuring out who to pitch them to because they’ve been running a presidential campaign.
Think of the team that makes the “Briefing” videos for the Clinton operation. Think of the data group that identifies just who should see each video and how to find them. Think of the Correct the Record PAC and all their internet squirrels rushing through comment threads with facts and talking points. Himself’s campaign had none of that. He didn’t “believe” in data.
Himself had to hire a digital campaign. Whole. With twice as many people as it takes, most with no experience in political campaigns, at contractor prices.
So when you hear of Himself’s “big move” in digital, don’t worry overmuch. He’s making up at rent-to-own rates what he should have bought in the first place.
. . .
After reading about Giles-Parscale and the “big bet,” I went looking for some of these ads. Couldn’t find them unless I was looking specifically for Himself material. Here’s one found on a youtube search.
It clicks through to an email signup.
Another one, found reading the Post story on digital ad spending, struck a patriotic tone. I expected to click through to an issue page on veterans or something similar.
Instead, it lead straight to a donation page.
As Ad Age notes:
According to Moat Pro, many of the Trump campaign ads appear to be turning up on long-tail websites, suggesting they've been aimed at people who have already visited the Trump site, using retargeting methods.
Ad retargeting, use of fundraising media companies like the Prosper Group and the big bump in small-donation fundraising by Himself’s campaign in July suggest much of the new online advert efforts were aimed at hoovering dollars from Himself’s already-convinced supporters, rather than convincing undecided voters.