Donald Trump expend more than $11.1 m on Facebook and Google ads alone in the first six months after the 2019
It was the end of a tumultuous month for the Trump White House.A redacted version of the Mueller report had been released to the public. Democratic committee leaders were threatening subpoenas. The special counsel had broken his silence to criticize the attorney general's handling of the report's release.
In Washington DC, Donald Trump's presidency was under as much pressure as ever. But on Facebook, the Trump circle was asserting another reality.
” While Democrats have expended the last two years wasting your fund on a bogus Witch HUNT that procure NO COLLUSION, President Trump has been fighting for YOU ,” read the copy in Facebook ads run by Trump's re-election campaign on 30 April.” The Democratic Party has sink so low that they're embracing Anti Semite Ilhan Omar, who recently minimise the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as' some people did something .' Their party is a disgrace .”
The ads were notablefor a number of reasons.
They asked users to donate prior to a “CRUCIAL fundraising deadline” although there is the next major deadline would not come until 30 June, employing a time-tested marketing trick to create a false sense of urgency.
They were numerous, with more than 200 minor fluctuations of the ads running.
They were topical and negative, feeding an intensely divisive controversy earlier that month over out-of-context statements made by a Muslim congresswoman about post-9/ 11 Islamophobia rather than making an affirmative case for Trump's re-election.
And they targeted older Facebook users throughout the country, in defiance of conventional wisdom about who responds to social media campaigning.
Facebook ads run by Trump's re-election campaign seemed more than 500 days before election day. Photograph: Facebook
