An Examination of Media Buying Trends in the 2024 US Presidential General Election
Note: This analysis uses current FEC filings which show disbursements up to October 16, 2024 only. We have no visibility into campaign spending after this date, which historically includes the heaviest spending period of presidential campaigns. Additional filings will be needed to understand the full scope of media buy campaign spending through election day.
This repository contains records of media buys for the following presidential campaigns:
harristrump2020_bloomberg(Democratic Primary)2008 obama
They tried to "kill Tony."
This analysis originated from disbelief with respect to what I'll call the "Hinchcliffe Hypothesis."
When the Harris campaign attempted to transform a joke about landfills in Puerto Rico into a campaign-defining scandal, they went all-in on a tactical bluff - it exemplified their broader strategy of leveraging cultural censorship for political gain. The result -- their political felting.
The mainstream media's willingness to frame a working comedian's misplaced joke as evidence of "racism" wasn't just bad faith, it was a tell that demanded closer scrutiny of the underlying financial incentives at play.
Beyond the well-documented questions of ideological bias in our legacy media infrastructures, the financial relationship between campaigns and traditional media channels are somewhat underexplored. When a single campaign becomes a fledgling network’s dominant advertiser during a period of systematic ratings and revenue decline, the relationship between media buy and coverage patterns transcends issues of cognitive bias.
The significance of this incident extends beyond campaign spending and trad media economics, however.
Comedy serves a vital function in democratic discourse - it identifies and exposes patterns of societal absurdity.
Humor is our cultural debugging tool.
When a campaign invests unprecedented financial and political resources in suppressing humor itself, it suggests an attempt to control not just what we say, but how we process information. The self proclaimed party of “joy” are killjoys of our civil liberties.
They came for our laughter.
Legacy media confronts an existential crisis: plummeting viewership, collapsing advertising rates, and evaporating revenue streams. Public trust in punditry has eroded dramatically, accelerating the audience exodus. Linear TV networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) and cable TV faces unprecedented decline in non-sports viewership. NFL programming dominates - accounting for 93 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2023 - traditional linear programming struggles to maintain audience share. Most primetime shows now draw only 3-4 million viewers, a mere fraction of their historical audiences.
1990s Peak:
- Hit shows regularly drew 20-30 million viewers per episode
- "Seinfeld" finale (1998): 76.3 million viewers
- "Friends" routinely drew 20-25 million viewers per episode
- Major network evening news broadcasts: 30+ million combined viewers
2024:
- Most primetime shows struggle to reach 3-4 million viewers
- Biggest non-sports hits rarely exceed 10 million viewers
- Only NFL games consistently draw 20+ million viewers
This collapse in non-sports viewership makes these networks increasingly dependent on political advertising revenue to offset declining commercial advertising rates. In this context, campaign media buys represent an increasingly significant portion of network revenue. The Harris campaign's $668.3M media spending through mid-October constitutes a critical revenue stream during a period of systematic industry contraction -- this creates a perverse incentive structure.
Legacy Media's Revenue Crisis:
- Falling ratings across major linear TV and cable TV networks signals declining audience reach
- Fragmentation of viewership and audience migration to alternative platforms
- Erosion of traditional advertising base
- Revenue compression: lower viewership = reduced advertising rates
Campaign Spending as Revenue Lifeline:
- Harris campaign's $668.3M media spend through October 16 represents increasingly critical revenue for struggling networks
- Harris campaign is a dominant advertising customer
- For networks facing revenue pressure, this creates substanial dependency
- This increasing dependency raises fundamental questions about editorial independence and coverage objectivity
FEC filings reveal significant disparities in media buys with a 5.4:1 spending ratio between the Harris and Trump campaigns through October 16th.
Media Buys through Oct 16, 2024:
- Harris Campaign: $668.3M (67% of $997.9M raised)
- Trump Campaign: $202.1M (55% of $391.9M raised)
Daily Average Spend on Media Buys (July 15 to October 16):
- Harris: $11.72M
- Trump: $2.17M
The Harris camoaign repeated a known failed strategy at scale. By October 16th, her campaign had exceeded Mike Bloomberg's legendary 2020 primary media buy spend by 4.1% ($668.3M vs $641.9M). Assuming an estimated additional $100M in media buys between October 16 and November 5, the Harris campaign likely exceeds Bloomberg's spending by 19.7% ($768.3M vs $641.9M), which is considered to be an extreme outlier in campaign spending. However,unlike Bloomberg who self-funded 99.92% of his campaign, Harris spent funds raised from individual donor contributions for her supersonic spending spree.
Note: Even adjusting for the seasonal price differential between Super Tuesday and the general election, the scale of Harris campaign's spending warrants attention. If Harris is spending at levels comparable to Bloomberg, but during a period when TV ads cost more (general election vs. primary), she's effectively achieving less media exposure per dollar than Bloomberg did. This suggests an even more aggressive spending pattern than Bloomberg's already notable spree, raising questions about resource allocation and strategy. The key isn't just that media is more expensive – it's that Harris is willing to spend heavily despite getting less bang for each buck.
Bloomberg 2020 Primary Campaign (Baseline Failure):
- Total media buy spend: $641.9M
- Daily average spend: $6.42M
- Peak single-day spend: $77.6M
- Soure of funding -- self-funded: 99.92% ($1.089B of $1.121B)
- Individual contributions: $900K (0.08%)
- ROI: 0 delegates / $641.9M
Harris Campaign (Repeat Failure):
- Total media by spend (to Oct 16): $668.3M (104.1% of Bloomberg's total)
- Peak single-day spend: $74.33M (Sept 16)
- Individual contributions: $504.7M (50.6% of total funds)
- Spending ratio vs Trump: 5.4:1 - Lost the popular vote and electoral vote
What makes Harris’ spending particularly noteworthy is the willful ignorance of recent historical and empirical data, demonstrating the limitations of a media buy dump. Bloomberg’s $641.9M investment in media buys yielded zero delegates.
While Bloomberg's uniquely degenerate political gambit was funded with $1.089B of his own money ($1.089B self-funded), the Harris campaign used $504.7M in individual contributions from "mainstreet donors" - which represents a compound failure of strategy and possibly, campaign finance ethics, and fiduciary responsibility.
Media Buy vs Production The Harris campaign's FEC filings conflate distinct expenditure categories. Most problematic is their practice of combining "media buys" and "production" into a single line item. These are fundamentally different activities that serve distinct purposes and typically operate under separate budgets:
Media Buying:
- Purchase of advertising time/space
- Direct placement costs
- Channel-specific expenditures
- Measurable market rates
Production:
- Content creation costs
- Technical service fees
- Creative development
- Studio and equipment expenses
Accounting and Oversight Issues
From both an accounting and oversight perspective, this conflation of disbursement purpose categories is problematic. It's equivalent to a company merging its media placement costs (buying airtime/space) with its content creation costs (production) into a single expense category. Standard accounting practices require these activities to be reported separately because they:
- Serve different strategic purposes (distribution vs. creation)
- Have different cost structures (fixed vs. variable)
- Require different types of oversight (placement efficiency vs. production quality)
- Impact campaign effectiveness differently (reach vs. message impact)
The lack of accurate disbursement descriptions creates opportunities for:
- Disproportionate allocation between buying and production
- Cross-subsidization between different expense types
- Potential misappropriation and or misallocation hidden through broad disbursement categories
Despite its aforementioned failures, the Bloomberg campaign provided a model for better financial reporting for media buy disbursements through:
- Separating media buys from media/content production costs
- Providing channel-specific information with respect to media buy disbursements in FEC filings
The combination of record-breaking campaign spending and vague expense categorization creates particular challenges in tracking celebrity endorsement costs. The Harris campaign's approach to reporting celebrity-related expenses appears designed to minimize transparency.
Through October 16th, FEC filings show only one clear celebrity-related payment: a disbursement to Harpo Productions (Oprah Winfrey's company) labeled simply as "event production." This vague categorization sets a concerning precedent.
Tracing Celebrity-Support Related Expenses Subsequent FEC filings may reveal significantly higher celebrity-related expenditures and potentially more complex categorization issues.
Media reports indicate substantial celebrity payments after our October 16th cutoff date:
- Beyoncé: Reported $10 million appearance fee
- Eminem: Significant but unspecified fee
- Lizzo: Significant but unspecified fee
These reported payments remain unverifiable until future FEC filings become available. Given the campaign's pattern of obscuring celebrity payments under vague production categories, even future filings may not provide clear visibility into actual compensation structures.
Categorization Ambiguity Celebrity compensation typically flows through corporate entities, creating layers of categorical complexity:
- Business entity payments vs. direct compensation
- Production services vs. appearance fees
- Event costs vs. talent costs
Current reporting practices of the Harris campaign perpetuates systematic opacity of the nature of “endorsements” through:
- Bundling of distinct service types
- Vague categorical assignments
- Absence of “appearance fee” structures and their transparency in spending reporting
If celebrity appearances and “endorsements” are being categorized under “production services”, such designations:
- Misrepresent the true nature of disbursements
- Conflates technical services with talent fees
- Conflates an “endorsement” with “paid support”
- Creates hidden financial incentives behind “public support” and or “endorsements”
Mandatory disclosure requirements; implement structured reporting requirements for:
- Clear segregation of and reporting for appearance fees
- Explicit endorsement/paid support compensation disclosure
- Itemized production vs. talent costs
Fair Market Value Guidelines Establish standardized reporting frameworks for:
- Base production cost benchmarks
- Celebrity premium differentiation
- Market rate documentation requirements
These findings indicate a need for structural reform of FEC reporting requirements. The analysis also reveals possible cause to trigger an FEC "for cause" audit:
Manifest Pattern of Reporting Violations: The Harris for President campaign demonstrates irregularities in expense categorization, notably by: - Combining media buys with production costs - Possibly obscuring celebrity appearance fees under vague "event production" designations - Possibly incentivizing "endorsements" through exorbitant fees charged off as "event production" and or "media production" expenses - Using strategically ambiguous disbursement descriptions for major expenditures - Lack of granularity in reporting of nine-figure media expenditures
The joy of spending other people’s money...to be continued.
This repository provides cleaned data sets, including detailed media buy disbursement records for:
Citation Note Should you wish to cite or reference this analysis in your work, please attribute as "gaiaus repository (Github)." All data is from Federal Election Commission filings through October 16, 2024.
Postscript: Historical Spending Comparisons Comparing Harris campaign media spending with historical precedents (like Obama for America 2008) presents several analytical challenges. Multiple variables affect meaningful comparison:
- Media cost inflation over 16 years
- Structural changes in media consumption
- Evolution of advertising channel mix
- Shifts in campaign strategy
- Different competitive media and political landscapes
While precise spending comparisons are difficult without detailed cost basis data, the Obama for America disbursement records are included in this repository as his campaign provided more descriptive disbursement details. The Harris campaign's ambiguous disbursement categorizations represent a significant regression in campaign finance reporting to the FEC, even within their own party's reporting standards.
media_related
All media-related disbursements
placed_media
All disbursements labeled as "placed media" in FEC filings
source_data
Raw data files
- by_spending_category: Spending analysis by conventional campaign spend categories
- top_500_recipients: Largest disbursement recipients
event_production
All disbursements labeled as "event production" in FEC filings
media_buys
All disbursements labeled as "media buy" in FEC filings
media_related
All media-related disbursements
paid_media
*All disbursements labeled as "paid media" in FEC filings
source_data
Raw data files
- by_disbursement_description: Expenses categorized by description
- by_spending_category: Spending analysis by campaign categories
- top_500_recipients: Largest disbursement recipients
Note: Each candidate folder contains a README with financial summaries for their principal presidential committees. All data sourced from FEC filings through October 16, 2024.