Post-debate digital onslaught

Biden tries to catch Trump with post-debate digital onslaught

The campaign was taking over home pages on some of the web’s most popular sites.

By ALEX THOMPSON

A day after Donald Trump’s campaign flexed its digital muscle with a seven-figure ad-buy, Joe Biden’s campaign was responding in kind with a post-debate digital advertising onslaught beginning at midnight to help win the online narrative surrounding the debate.

The Biden campaign’s Wednesday digital ad buy includes homepage takeovers on many of the most popular sites on the web including the most expensive digital ad space of all — the YouTube homepage — which the Trump campaign held on Tuesday. The Biden campaign also bought the homepage ad space on AOL, Yahoo!, CNN, Fox News, Pandora, Univision, Reddit, The Daily Mail, CBS Sports, and more.

The Biden campaign cast the wide-ranging ad buy as a “take over the internet” approach. One of Biden’s YouTube’s homepage ads — which are expected to get millions of views — is a new ad attacking Trump's debate performance. "Over 200,000 dead, 14 million jobs lost, and Donald Trump spent an entire debate blaming others," the narrator says casting a Biden presidency as a "fresh start."

Many of the homepage ads will feature Biden in a mask with the tagline "Real Leadership." And another one of the YouTube ads also try to focus on leadership with an ad titled “That’s a President.”

The expensive ad buy is part of Biden’s larger effort to make a comeback in the digital space after largely ignoring it in the primary. Trump dominated spending on Google, Facebook, and YouTube for most of 2019 and early 2020, but the Biden campaign has been regularly outspending Trump in recent weeks to try to make up for Trump’s early investments and thanks to a surge of donations.

The Biden campaign has been pressing its recent financial advantage with a barrage of television ads but the Trump campaign has kept much of its digital edge with dominant Facebook and YouTube pages. Including Tuesday’s YouTube takeover, the Trump campaign has already reserved the video site’s home page for 12 of the last 36 days before Election Day. The Trump campaign also has reserved that home page — which is the digital equivalent of a Super Bowl ad — for the final three days of the election.

The Biden post-debate digital blitz is part of a larger strategy to shape the online conversation in the 24 hours after the debate. As smartphones and social conversation have become more central to people’s perceptions of the debate, both campaigns have been pouring resources into trying to influence that dialogue.

Biden spokesperson Matt Hill told POLITICO: “Millions of Americans saw real leadership from Joe Biden on the debate stage and they will see it again all day as we take over the internet.”