U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris greets the audience during a campaign rally at United Auto Workers Local 900 in Wayne, Michigan, on August 8, 2024.
Andrew Harnick | Getty Images
The Harris campaign announced Saturday that it has booked at least $370 million worth of TV and online advertising in key battleground states between Labor Day and the November election.
During the nine-week campaign period leading up to Election Day, the Harris campaign will spend $170 million on TV advertising and $200 million on digital advertising across platforms including Hulu, Roku, YouTube, Paramount, Spotify and Pandora.
Nearly a month after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, she has been trying to make herself known to voters before former President Donald Trump came to define her.
The Harris campaign announced Saturday that it is seeking to get ahead of the Republican presidential campaign in selecting advertising locations.
“By booking early, the Harris-Wales campaign is securing inventory before tickets sell out during high-viewership moments like major sporting events and other national programming,” Harris’ deputy campaign managers Quentin Fulks and Rob Flaherty wrote in a campaign memo.
According to the campaign, the primetime ads will include season premieres of TV shows like ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Golden Bachelorette,” as well as live sporting events like NFL, WNBA, NBA, NHL and MLB games.
“As the air date approaches, the rates go up and the inventory to choose from decreases, so buying later means Trump is paying more per ad buy and getting worse placements, especially on high-rated programming like live sports,” Fulks and Flaherty added.
The Trump campaign has rejected the idea that it should try to catch up with Harris, and has argued that her campaign’s new advertising blitz is overspending.
“The President Trump ad is actually being seen by more people than the[Harris]ad, which is further evidence that her campaign is spending money recklessly and recklessly because they have no idea how to run a winning campaign,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said in a statement to CNBC.
The Harris campaign’s commitment to invest $30 million more in digital advertising reflects a strong commitment to going beyond the traditional TV advertising model to reach voters in today’s increasingly fragmented media environment.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris announced her candidacy, her campaign has aired $33 million worth of TV and radio ads, according to tracking firm AdImpact. The Harris Victory Fund has spent more than $43 million on Facebook and Google ads, making it one of the biggest spenders on the presidential campaign so far.
“We believe we are on a good path to spend more on digital persuasive media than any other political organization,” Fulks and Flaherty wrote in a campaign memo.
The Harris campaign also believes it can run weekly ads on Fox News to reach a “more moderate audience,” including supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, and persuade them to vote Democratic.
The Harris campaign’s fall advertising blitz will come in the final moments of the race, after the two major party conventions have wrapped up and as Democrats and Republicans make their final pushes to voters.
Compared to Biden’s 2020 run, Harris’s campaign said it spent twice as much on TV advertising in Pennsylvania, more than twice as much in Wisconsin, four times as much in Georgia, and six times as much in Nevada.
