Biden campaign announces $15 million ad blitz in six battleground states
Joe Biden's presidential campaign announced Thursday it is launching a five-week, $15 million advertising blitz in six battleground states, its first major advertising effort for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of the general election.
According to the campaign, the television and digital ads will run in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona — all states won by President Trump in 2016. There will also be a national cable component including Fox News.
On Thursday, the Biden campaign released three ads that are at the center of its paid media effort. In one spot, "Unite Us," Biden's voice can be heard saying Americans are suffering. "The country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together. That's what the presidency is, the duty to care," he says. Images of a hospital hallway, then an abandoned factory appear. The ad also shows recent footage of Biden wearing a mask, which Mr. Trump refuses to do in public. In the ad, the former vice president vows he will not traffic in fear and division and will "seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country."
The source of the audio is Biden's Philadelphia address on the country's need for leadership, delivered in the wake of the death of George Floyd, Biden for President director of paid media Patrick Bonsignore noted in a statement. "It was an address that Donald Trump could never give," Bonsignore said.
In another one-minute ad titled "My Commitment," Biden says that "this moment has come to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation made to so many because the because if it weren't clear before, it's clear now: This country wasn't built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs — it was built by the great American middle class." He goes on to list essential workers, saying, "We need to do more than praise them — we need to pay them."
As part of its investment, the Biden campaign will also be placing both English and Spanish-language content across Florida and in Arizona, which the Biden campaign hopes will show "the thoughtfulness and seriousness" of its outreach to the Latino community.
At the same time, starting Friday, the campaign is also be making a six-figure investment in African-American print, radio, and targeted digital programming in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina, an effort that coincides with the celebration of Juneteenth.
The eight-figure spending announcement comes after the Biden campaign announced that along with the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committee, it raised more than $80 million in May, the most the campaign has raised so far in the 2020 election cycle. The New York Times first reported the campaign's new ad spending.
The ad expenditures come after a lengthy period without ads — Biden's campaign has not aired spots on TV or radio since early March, while he still faced opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination. According to Kantar/Campaign Media Analysis Group tracking, Biden's campaign spent just over $20 million in total on television and radio ads across the primary season.
Over the past three months, President Trump's campaign has been on the defensive since the coronavirus pandemic began, spending upwards of $25 million on television ads since early March including in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, as well as Arizona, Ohio and Iowa.