TV ad spend surpasses $300m by Clinton and Trump, but candidates spent less than expected
With one week remaining in the US presidential campaign, ad spend money is flowing fast into television markets in battleground states across the country, Bloomberg reports today.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who has raised a total of $1.3bn has increased her ad spending by 86% as compared with the week beginning October 18, to $29.6m, which is double what Donald Trump spent ($14.9m). She has spent a total of $214m on television advertising so far, while Trump, who has raised $795m overall, has spent $74m on TV ads. Both candidates are directing the bulk of their ad-buy firepower at five states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada.
Although total ad spend between the two is surpassing $300m overall, and reached $1bn during the entire presidential campaign season, Michael Franz, Bowdoin College professor of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks ads in federal elections explained in a recent podcast that candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton ad spend could have been far higher if the candidates themselves were not two of the most well-known, general election candidates prior to the campaign. Franz observed that when it came to ad spend, because Trump spent less, Clinton did not have to outpace him by a large margin.
"It’s really hard to know what’s underlying their strategy more generally, not necessarily knowing why they haven’t spent more money on political ads overall." Franz said. “Some would like to suggest that with the TV ad spending in general, the toolbox becomes deeper for campaigns and the outreach is happening online and digitally and other ways. But in terms of having a billionaire run for president of the United States and not be able to match or not want to match his opponent ad for ad just seems to boggle the mind."