Ad Rates Soar

As TV Ad Rates Soar, ‘Super PACs’ Pivot to Core Campaign Work

By NICK CORASANITI and MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Soaring advertising costs in early primary states are compelling major “super PACs” to realign their tactics, de-emphasizing costly broadcast commercials in favor of the kind of nuts-and-bolts work that presidential candidates used to handle themselves.

They are overseeing extensive field operations, data-collection programs, digital advertising, email lists, opposition research and voter registration efforts.

The shift away from the broadcast television buys that had been the groups’ main role in past presidential campaigns is among the most significant developments in outside political spending since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which paved the way for super PACs. Originally conceived as a vehicle to raise and spend unlimited money on television, the most expensive part of a White House run, the groups now are seeking to relieve campaigns of much of the vital infrastructure that candidates would otherwise have to assemble and manage.

The results of their efforts, which cannot be coordinated directly with the candidates, are unproven. It is not yet known whether field and data efforts spearheaded by outside groups will be as effective as they are in the hands of a candidate.

Yet the groups’ success or failure could help decide the Republican nomination: Super PACs control the vast majority of the money being spent in the primary, leaving the contenders largely at the mercy of the groups supporting them.

The shift away from TV commercials comes after summer advertising blitzes by groups backing Jeb Bush and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio failed to give them much of a lift and exposed an important weakness: While candidates are guaranteed by law access to the lowest unit advertising rates, super PACs must pay whatever the market will bear. There are also more super PACs than ever, each competing for time slots and driving prices higher.

In some parts of Iowa and New Hampshire, super PACs are paying almost nine times what a campaign would pay — largely erasing even the advantage held by a group like Right to Rise, which is supporting Mr. Bush and has raised more than $100 million, when compared with the smaller amounts of hard money raised by individual campaigns.

Keep the Promise I, a well-financed super PAC supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has run no ads with the exception of a single commercial that appeared repeatedly during the Iowa-Iowa State football game in September.

“Our super PAC resources are ample but not unlimited,” said Kellyanne Conway, the group’s president. Though Mrs. Conway said Keep the Promise I had produced ads, it has not placed any, opting instead for a ground game, with 10 or more paid staff members in Iowa and in South Carolina.

Distinguishing between candidate and super PAC can be dizzying. Before a Cruz campaign event at a university in Sioux City, Iowa, a man who said he was with Keep the Promise I spoke up and passed around a couple of clipboards. “We all have the same goal,” he said apologetically. “It’s just that the wonderful world of bureaucracy makes things complicated.”

The same day, when a supporter asked about the finer points of campaign finance law after a religious forum in Des Moines, Mr. Cruz strained to conceal his frustration. “No one in their right mind would create a system like that,” he said. He then added, of his allied super PACs, “I’m left to just hope that what they say bears some resemblance to what I actually believe.”

Indeed, Mr. Cruz’s constellation of outside groups has been particularly unruly at times, with occasional public squabbles between the Keep the Promise network and an unaffiliated group, Courageous Conservatives PAC.

The super PAC supporting Carly Fiorina’s presidential run, Carly for America, perhaps most wholly replicates a modern presidential campaign. It handles advance work, ground operations, merchandise sales and volunteer lists.

Another super PAC, the 2016 Committee, which grew out of a group that promoted Ben Carson before he announced his candidacy, is raising money in small amounts, with an average donation of $67, and has assembled a volunteer network of about 36,000 people, said John Philip Sousa IV, the group’s chairman. He said it was pouring money “into feet-on-the-ground operations and get-out-the-vote operations as opposed to television commercials that once people see twice, they’re bored.”

Mr. Sousa said the group had compiled a fund-raising list of more than a million potential donors’ email addresses, which it is renting to the Carson campaign. That follows the example set by Ready PAC, formerly known as Ready for Hillary, which spent close to a year building support for Hillary Clinton before she announced her candidacy. It never ran a television ad. (Nor has Correct the Record, a super PAC founded by David Brock that is focusing exclusively on opposition research and rapid response in Mrs. Clinton’s defense.)

Many super PACs will turn to television soon enough, but even those that have done so already have recognized the need for more than just TV ads.

New Day for America, the super PAC supporting Mr. Kasich, is pursuing a highly advanced ground game in partnership with a data-analytics firm, Applecart: The firm says it mines data sources like yearbooks and local news reports to decipher which people have personally influential relationships with sought-after voters. Rather than giving phone-bank callers or canvassers lists of random people to contact, for example, the organizers are assigning each of those volunteers to reach 10 to 20 New Hampshire voters they know personally and convert them into Kasich supporters.

Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Mr. Bush, is also starting to pour more money into online messaging, where — unlike on television — its dollars go just as far as the candidate’s. All advertisers — campaigns, super PACs, even Frito-Lay — pay the same rates for digital ads.

“With TV getting a bit more crowded, we’re looking at frequency,” said Sheena Arora, a digital strategist at Revolution Agency who works with Right to Rise — meaning “how many times we’re hitting individuals across devices.” The group has been creating a wide range of ads aimed at smartphones, tablets and even Xbox gaming systems.

Not everyone buys into the changing tactics. Rick Shaftan, who leads the pro-Cruz Courageous Conservatives group, suggested that spending money on field efforts made little sense for his operation. “This is what I did as field guy: hung out with the volunteers, brought people signs and brought people literature,” he said. “That was 1984. Now we’re in a world where it’s all different. People can get their own signs.”

But for most super PACs, it is not a question of whether to do more than television ads — it is a question of exactly what else to try.

“We’re pleased with the dividends so far,” said Mrs. Conway, the Keep the Promise I president. “But it is a bit of a gamble.”