
Analyzing the Facebook ads placed by the US presidential candidates - davidfoster
https://medium.com/applied-data-science/56-070-165-facebook-ad-spend-of-us-presidential-candidates-broken-down-by-age-and-gender-2dcc32fe2c02
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minimaxir
How exactly did they get access to the Facebook Ad Library API? You need
special permission for that:
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api/)

Also, per those docs, ad spend is a range; I'm not sure how the article infers
exact values.

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envy2
No, you don't, at least not in the sense of "Facebook approves your use case
based on some subjective criteria."

Per the page you linked, as long as you verify your ID/location, are from one
of the countries where the Ad Library has launched, and agree to the Facebook
Platform Policy, you can get access.

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_kehan
This is awesome. There's a vast amount of data being made available, and it's
great that people are making that data more accessible through visualizations
and pattern detection.

There's a site that does a similar kind of analysis and offers regular updates
to their reports: [https://www.adspend2020.com/](https://www.adspend2020.com/)

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NoKidnapPlease
I'd like to see something similar on for YouTube and Twitter for the recent
Hong Kong protests, I'm seeing lots of clearly political adverts on both
platforms labeling protestors as "Black Terror" and the such.

[https://i.redd.it/00nqhz8ufnf31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/00nqhz8ufnf31.jpg)

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matchagaucho
Gender and age are interesting. But elections are won or lost based on ad copy
targeted at interest groups... neither appear to be available in this
analysis(?)

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rightmic
Yeah this analysis is great, but we have actually been classifying Facebook Ad
Spend by issue i.e. Environment, Economy, Guns, etc - check it out on our site
www.adspend2020.com

~~~
belorn
The attack ad category is _very_ interesting but I suspect also very
controversial.

It would also be interesting to see how many ads are identically shared
between candidates of same party and how large percentage is unique for each
candidate, and preferable being able to select them out (maybe a bit fuzzy so
the difference is not just a few characters at the end that adds 2%
uniqueness).

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acollins1331
Interestingly enough, it might be on purpose the Democrats are not targeting
old white men. There could be something to be said that if the 60 year old
football loving men of the world get bombarded with Elizabeth Warren ads they
will turn out to vote AGAINST her when they otherwise would've stayed home.

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wasdfff
60 year old white men have voted in every election for the past 40 years and
people generally don’t switch ideology this late in life. The democrats
strategy has always been to improve turnout from groups that dont vote in
every election. There are more democrats in the US than republicans, but not
everyone votes. Elections are determined on getting good turnout, not swaying
people to jump ship to your side.

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baxtr
This is an interesting article show casing what kind of data is available
through the API. There are many graphs, lots of data. But, little insight from
my perspective. Democrats are rather targeting women and younger demographics
than Republicans. Oh well...

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dillondoyle
since when do you have to pay to read Medium posts? We have our clients use it
for 'blog' content for ease and SEO, but wouldn't advise if the articles can't
be read for free...

~~~
pests
For many many months. it seems to be inconsistent like they are still figuring
out their strategy.

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buboard
But there is no input from the campaigns about how they choose their spending.
I might guess they do their a/b testing and keep the ads that engage users
more. this might be indicative of each candidate's audience. Assuming that
this is true Sanders seems to be having the widest reach, judging from how
close m/f ratio is to 50%

~~~
ricefield
From the article:

"Facebook allows you to select the location, age range, gender and ‘interests’
of your audience. Only people that fall into your target audience will see the
sponsored ad. Specifying ‘interests’ indirectly affects the distribution of
age, gender and location."

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throwaway1748
This is great data, but missing one crucial piece: how much reach did each
candidate achieve given their spend? Both what they directly paid for with the
ads, and then what the ads achieved organically beyond the spend.

My suspicion is that Trump, by being outrageous, realizes far cheaper
effective ad rates (i.e. when you factor in both paid & organic reach) than
any other candidate.

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cryptozeus
Clearly some candidates have learned from prev elections and some have not.

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bengotow
This is super cool! I'd be really curious to see how the messaging to
particular demographics compares as well. Wild that the Trump campaign is
spending so much money...

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eanzenberg
Why? The D's as a group are outspending Trump, in fact the top 3 D's are
outspending Trump. I'd be interested to see this type of analysis for the 2016
(and 2012 and 2008) elections.

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chillacy
Well it surprises me because Trump already has the nomination and it's not
even time for the general election yet, the D's are essentially running right
now, Trump is preparing to run.

Edit: actually looking at his ads, they're asking for fundraising so that
makes sense if he's getting positive ROI.

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lettergram
Trump doesn’t technically have the nomination yet -
[https://fortune.com/2019/04/22/republican-presidential-
candi...](https://fortune.com/2019/04/22/republican-presidential-
candidates-2020/)

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edoceo
This link re-routes to Medium, can we get that fixed?

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sctb
Sure thing! Updated from [https://adsp.ai/blog/us-presidential-candidates-
facebook-ads...](https://adsp.ai/blog/us-presidential-candidates-facebook-
ads/).

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kmlx
i don’t have a facebook account so i get a warning at the top: “By clicking or
navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and
off Facebook through cookies”

this is so against gdpr it’s crazy.

facebook, what the hell?

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buildzr
Are you an EU citizen?

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mehrdadn
I think the question is "Are you in Europe?"

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codeddesign
Clinton didn’t spend anything on Facebook? The data is also a little screwed
considering that it was Trump and Hillary in the General election. All of the
other candidates were just in the primary. Ad spending will heavily increase
for a candidate in the General election.

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belorn
The article cover spending between May 2018 and July 2019.

Clinton announced On March 4, 2019 that she will not run for president in
2020. ([http://westchester.news12.com/story/40067049/im-not-
running-...](http://westchester.news12.com/story/40067049/im-not-running-
hillary-clinton-rules-out-2020-bid-for-first-time-on-camera-in-exclusive-
interview-with-news-12))

The article is not about last the election cycle 3-5 years ago.

~~~
codeddesign
Fair enough - I scrolled over the dates. That doesn’t dismiss the fact that
you have a national party backing compared to individuals. In which case
democrats are heavily outspending republicans.

