What do Joe Biden and Donald Trump have in common? Among other things, they both really, really want to target older women on Facebook with their respective campaign ads. And as evidenced via the Facebook data that the New York Times examined, both men are funneling a good amount of money into achieving just that.
How much are we talking? Recently, Biden spent more than Trump in May by pouring in an impressive $1.1 million, while Trump spent about $940,000. In the past year, Trump’s campaign spent $5 million in Facebook ads. Wow. For some perspective, the Times reports that Trump has already outspent all the other Democratic candidates, including Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
If you check out Facebook’s Ad Library, anyone can look at how much each campaign spends on Facebook. You can also look at what sort of ads the campaign is buying. And, as is the case here, who those ads are (hoping) to reach.
Trump is allocating 75% of his Facebook ads to people over 45, whereas Biden is targeting 82% to the same demographic, as reported in Democratic communications agency Bully Pulpit Interactive’s analysis. To look a little deeper, more than 65% of Biden’s are aimed right at women. For Trump, that’s the case for 56% of his ads.
How come? Probably because they know who (historically) is likely to actually vote.
"Older people are more likely to vote than younger folks, and both Biden and Trump both know that women are key to winning in 2020," Jane Hughes, a director at Bully Pulpit, told Mashable.
This makes a lot of sense. It’s also hard (but important) to remember that in 2016, white women really showed up for Trump. Hopefully, they aren’t seeing these ads …
What do you think?