Bloomberg makes ‘massive’ ad buy
Quote:
In the latest sign Michael Bloomberg is prepared to spend freely on a prospective presidential bid, the billionaire has begun booking a huge quantity of TV ad time in media markets across the country — including the one that’s home to President Donald Trump’s winter White House, Mar-a-Lago.
The ads will begin airing as soon as Monday. As of the close of business on Friday, Advertising Analytics tracked buys of around $34 million in reservations so far, touching parts of all but two of the lower 48 states.
This buy is MASSIVE,” Ben Taber, an analyst for the television ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics, said in an email to POLITICO earlier Friday. "I think it‘s going to be the biggest buy of all time," he wrote. Then-President Barack Obama had a $30 million, one-week long buy in 2012, Taber said.
Bloomberg could spend more in one day than other presidential candidates spend in an entire campaign’s lifespan," said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic consultant pollster who worked for President Obama’s campaigns. "What makes the Bloomberg campaign budget so amazing is that there is no budget. Everything is attainable....We haven’t seen a presidential campaign like one that Michael Bloomberg could run.”
A handful of television stations across the country have already filed reports with the Federal Communications Commission with more details on Bloomberg’s buy.
The buy is a minute-long spot, according numerous FCC filings, and will mention an opposing candidate. A filing from WFAA, a station based in Dallas, Texas, notes that the ad "mentions running against Trump 3x within creative," in a handwritten note. The Texas Tribune first spotted the Dallas filing. Assembly Media is Bloomberg’s media buyer.
The ad buy comes one day after Bloomberg filed a statement with the Federal Election Commission creating a presidential campaign committee. The former New York City mayor has plans to spend as much as $500 million this election.
To blunt that criticism, Bloomberg committed this past week to spending $100 million in digital ads aimed just at Trump and another $15 to $20 million to register half a million voters.
Bloomberg’s team calculates that, due to the size and instability of the Democratic field, no clear frontrunner may emerge after the run of the first four early states that ends with South Carolina voting Feb. 29. That could leave the billionaire in an ideal position to forcefully begin to compete on March 3 when 15 states plus American Samoa vote on Super Tuesday.
While some of Bloomberg’s opponents may be starved for cash at that time, he will have the unprecedented luxury of being able to advertise in all of the states, including mammoth Texas and California, the size and expense of which can easily bankrupt a campaign.
There’s already a billionaire in the race, Tom Steyer — whose consultant, Kevin Cate, cautioned on Twitter that ad money can only go so far.
“TV spending isn't everything,” Cate wrote. “Earned media is king in presidential campaigns. I ran a one week @criticalmention report on Elizabeth Warren's TV coverage — & it came out to about 3x the monetary value of this [Bloomberg] buy.”
Cate estimated that Warren’s earned media alone was the equivalent of about $80 million.
Sanders says he's 'disgusted' by Bloomberg's $30 million ad buyQuote:
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tore into former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday over news of Bloomberg's $31.5 million ad buy as he mulls his own White House bid.
“I’m disgusted by the idea that Michael Bloomberg or any other billionaire thinks they can circumvent the political process and spend tens of millions of dollars to buy our elections. It’s just the latest example of a rigged political system that we are going to change when we’re in the White House,” Sanders said in a statement.
“If you can’t build grassroots support for your candidacy, you have no business running for president. The American people are sick and tired of the power of billionaires, and I suspect they won’t react well to someone trying to buy an election.”
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