One issue is dominating campaign ads on the left. What do voters think?
Plus: Campaigns aren’t keen on Facebook, but they don’t have a lot of options
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
One issue is dominating campaign ads on the left. What do voters think?
Campaigns aren’t keen on Facebook, but they don’t have a lot of options
There’s a new Smithsonian exhibition about cellphones. Feel old yet?
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One issue is dominating campaign ads on the left. What do voters think?
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Democrats have honed in on reproductive rights as their top issue.
A spending analysis by Axios found the DNC and Democratic House and Senate committees ramped up spending on Facebook ads about abortion beginning in the late summer, and it remains the issue these groups are spending the most on.
DNC ads include some written in the Notes app, others highlighting Republicans who support a nationwide abortion ban, and direct-to-camera video with Democrats including President Joe Biden and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Abortion is also the No. 1 issue in Democratic TV ads, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. The group, which tracks political advertising, found abortion is mentioned in 27% of pro-Democratic Senate ads, 38% of pro-Democratic House ads, and 43% of pro-Democratic gubernatorial ads.
Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t mentioning abortion in their ads, instead focusing on the budget, taxes, and public safety. Democrats mention these issues in their ads too, but in lower volumes, Wesleyan Media Project co-director Erika Franklin Fowler said in a statement.
“We are seeing a real divergence in attention to abortion with Democrats featuring it prominently and Republican ads avoiding the topic,” Fowler said.
30% of U.S. adults rate abortion as an “extremely important” issue, according to a Monmouth University poll released Thursday. It came behind inflation (46%), elections and voting (38%), crime (37%), immigration (34%), and jobs and unemployment (32%).
Campaigns aren’t keen on Facebook, but they don’t have a lot of options
An estimated $1.44 billion is expected to be spent on digital political ads in 2022, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm, and much of that money will go to Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
If political advertisers want to meet voters where they are, they can’t do much better than Meta’s apps. Facebook is used by 69% of U.S. adults and Instagram by 40%, both more than every other app tracked by Pew Research last year except Google-owned YouTube, at 81%.
Still, political professionals told Bloomberg Businessweek that Facebook isn’t as effective as it used to be due to a stagnant user base and privacy changes that make it harder to target ads.
Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update allowed users to opt-out of app tracking, costing Meta billions. Then in January, Meta removed the option for advertisers to target users based on information including “topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation” if the ads are about politics, social issues, causes, sexual orientation, or religious practices.
The problem for campaigns is a growing number of platforms now expressly forbid political advertising in the wake of the 2016 Cambridge Analytica data scandal and revelations about Russian troll farms that sought to affect the outcome of the election. In 2019, Twitter announced a ban on political ads arguing “political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
Which platforms allow political ads:
Allows political ads: Facebook, Google, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, Spotify, YouTube
Doesn’t allow political ads: LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter
Republican gubernatorial candidates have built earned reach on Facebook, according to FWIW, a newsletter about political advertising. In the races for governor in Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates all saw higher engagement on their content than Democratic candidates, even Democrats who had more followers.
Correction: Meta still allows political advertisers to target users by age, gender, and location. An earlier version of this newsletter incorrectly stated they could not. I regret the error.
There’s going to be a Smithsonian exhibition about cellphones. Feel old yet?
I don’t mean to alarm you, but cellphones are getting their own Smithsonian exhibition.