Interesting to compare the top ads when sorting "Amount spent: high to low" and "Number of times shown: high to low". Political ads from 4 years ago appear to have been shown many more times for much less cost. This year's ads seem considerably more expensive while also reaching a smaller audience.
Boy do I wish for a governments ban and cultural shift on the mindless resource contention consumerism that makes people buy useless plastic bullshit. Our planet is doomed, we're just lucky the Earth is so big.
Ad impressions were artificially cheap during Covid as people spent more time on their devices. There was such an increase in prices post-Covid that it caused a bust in e-commerce companies. This was also partially caused by Apple privacy changes.
Competition might be part of that too: more money chasing the same number of eyeballs as the election season ramped up (for that matter, probably chasing a smaller number of eyeballs, as critical segments of swing voters became more clear)
Looks like it's primarily the "location" demographic that is actually different. Neither ad excludes any demographics for Age or Gender but the 2024 includes specific locations for advertisements. So maybe fewer people in Europe and elsewhere seeing American political ads, which I'd assume is preferred by the advertisers. I can see how that would compound to this effect; fewer valuable targets and more value per target.
(Another thing I notice is the ad run length. The 2020 ads ran for a single day (with over 10M views!) and the 2024 ads have been running for weeks or months. Not sure if that's relevant to the expenditure but it's interesting to note.)
In Norway it's forbidden with political ads on TV. Reasoning being that live images can have a huge influence, while also possibly being inflammatory and dumb down the debate. But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
However, this law hasn't been updated in decades. So it's still only TV ads that's illegal. So it feels like a quite arbitrary restriction now.
Not saying it should be illegal on other media as well, but I do like the idea of it not being the size of your pockets determining the election. I guess that would be hard to police anyways now, with how influencers can sway stuff without it being an "ad", or how algorithms drive you into a rabbit hole of tailored content anyways.
Kind of new in the US, you can't stop people in the US from spending money on ads that amplify there speech. [1]
Political spending is regulated, but we now have "political action committees" that can support candidates but can't coordinate with them. They can accept money from anyone in any amounts. Its brought tons of money from wealthy doners into polics in the US.
> But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
I think the main reason for rules like this is because it's literally politicians and political parties shoveling huge amounts of cash to the media, and 1) one of the purposes of the media is to inform people about politicians and politics, and 2) the politicians who are elected will oversee the media and their mergers. An intimate relationship is created where democracy demands an adversarial one.
It's rotten. It's the same reason no media can criticize any drug in the US, since they were allowed to advertise to the public. I'm sure there's some value in having people ask for specific drugs from their doctors, but that's minimal; the main value is being immune to any criticism unless an e.g. television station wants to lose 20% of their income.
Also media outlets are free to propagandize all day. You can't restrict that because we don't want to restrict freedom of the press. But then that begs the question, don't all companies and individuals have the same freedom of the press that media companies do?
This is the most shocking part from an outsider POV. In Europe* mainstream media must obviously be neutral about each candidate but also give the same amount of airing time to each candidate. So like if candidate 1 is invited for a 10 min interview, candidate 2 must be invited too and offered the same airing time. Meanwhile here Fox can just call Harris "stupid" (and CNN reciprocally call Trump whatever they want), lie to make them look good/bad and support their candidate all day long while spitting on the other one, and it's fine.
Edit: my bad for generalizing all countries of Europe
The real reason of course is that the political establishment wanted to protect themselves from competition. They can control printed media within the country, but had no control over broadcast television, which could be beamed from a satellite. Due to the restrictions on press freedom in Scandinavia, commercial TV stations used to be based in the UK. A parliament member in Sweden even suggested a ban on satellite dishes at the time, when the first non-government TV channels started broadcasting.
> But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
This is not the case. Electoral authorities could oblige all broadcasters to give every candidate a certain number of minutes of broadcast time. That's how they do it in other countries. To hilarious effect sometimes.
They're different as in a video can influence you much stronger than a poster. But maybe you misunderstood me, my point was that the way we have it today isn't necessarily good either. Just curious about how one can give people good information, without it being too inflammatory, and without making an election a race about who has the most money.
It links to a website called fultongrandjury.com, which I at first thought would be an official government website, and what initially made me curious was the idea of spending money to advertise a government website, getting this additional credibility. Like, if the facts are so strongly on your side that you merely need to spend ad money to point people to official sources, that's a strong signal.
> Fulton County Jury is a project of Our Community Media, Small Town American Media, and Small Town Truth.
None of these are linked, but they can be found with Google. Our Community Media appears to be a website with stories scraped from Google News, one even has the Google News default image. Small Town America Media claims to support Small Businesses, Telehealth in Rural America and Digital Literacy. Their latest news: Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Political Theater by State Politicians.
Small Town Truth is probably the most inspiring:
> For over 200 Years
> American has fought for truth
> Now....
> We need you to help
They have page dedicated to "discovering truth", telling it apart from "russian fake news"[1] which is copied from and links to a medium post.
None of these websites have information about who's behind them. No person. No address. They have contact pages, but these are just forms, probably to add you to some spam mailing list.
So, searching via that Exempt Organization Search led to a 501(c)(3) letter being issued to Small Town Truth, mailed to a residential address in the care of the "Better Narrative Group" - another "interesting" site[0].
Doing a little more searching, I've found another 501(c)(3) in care of Better Narrative Group: Soul of a Nation Media. Similar setup. In trying to find more information to connect some dots, I found Soul of a Nation Media's taxes were filed by ChurchBiz[1], but this hasn't led to anything interesting.
Both Small Town Truth and Soul of a Nation Media changed addresses to a PO Box in Virginia in 2022.
Oh, and here are another two I just found related to Better Narrative Group: American Volunteer Corps[2], Better Neighbors Network[3].
To not assume malice, maybe it's a concerned citizen trying, in their own way, by establishing these organizations. Something feels off about the sites, though - not much content, a little dead behind the eyes, and I can't put my finger on the actual purpose of the sites. Odd.
> fultongrandjury.com, which I at first thought would be an official government website
Are you being straight serious here, or are you doing a rhetoric thing where "I was confused" is just a shorthand for "I think some people might plausibly be confused"?
I could see some people who aren't net-saavy thinking that domain looks like a government website, but I'm surprised that anybody here might see a .com like that and think it an official anything. Official government websites in America almost always use a .gov, and when they don't they usually have some goofy long string of subdomains like www.courts.state.md.us (I'm not 100% sure that is actually official, but it's in the style government websites use and if an unofficial website used that style I'd definitely consider it an attempt to deceive people.)
usps.com. amtrak.com. mta.info. These were just the first that came to mind.
I think there are specific reasons behind each of these, but the fact is that I am used to interacting with government websites that end in .com, so it wouldn't surprise me if some county's court system also used a .com.
When I see .com I immediately assume it's not a government site until proven otherwise. It's sometimes done, particularly for affiliated and contracted sites, but also anyone can just go register a .com (see the history of whitehouse.com - from porn to gambling and more) plus government ones overwhelming tend to be .gov, .org, .us, etc anyways. (.gov is really the only one of those that's a particular guarantee of much but the others are at least slightly more likely to be real sites).
Looking at that smalltowntruth website reminds me of someone I met in 2015.
I stayed at a guy's airbnb in Denver. He was in breach of his renting agreement by hosting the airbnb and had previously spent about a year in jail (forget for what). He said he had 2 websites that he was promoting on Facebook and were making him money. On one website he posted lots of pro-Trump content and on the other he posted lots of pro-Bernie Sanders content. This was during the primaries so these articles were largely in opposition to Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. He said he didn't care about either candidate but both websites were making him good money in ad revenue. He was not actually affiliated with either party.
I wouldn't be surprised if he or someone else like him had scaled up their efforts.
I find that quite satisfying. At least someone is getting something tangible out of the screaming and shouting, and best of all, it’s something straightforward. Money.
interesting that the company that has the most viewed ads for 2024[1] ("FORCE VECTOR COMMUNICATIONS") has a total of 3 matches when you search for them[2]
The obscuring seems to be unnecessary these days. I don't know how many people are still fooled by names like "Americans for America" who would actually change their vote after finding out it's just a group of real estate speculators or whatever.
They also have an aggregate report page. It doesn't seem possible to break it down by ad category, but looks like the most recent big spenders are all political ads:
This really interesting, but I think they have an odd idea of transparency.
I searched for some ads for a congressional race in 2018, obviously inactive, and they were all there, but I couldn't view them because: "This content was removed because the disclaimer didn’t follow our policy for ads about social issues, elections or politics."
For what conceivable reason would they block historical ads, ads that actually ran in the past but are no longer active? Those ads probably didn't meet the disclaimer rules because the rules were different back in 2018.
According to the site, ad targeting is allowed based on gender and age, but not race or religion, for example. All four of those categories were previously used to restrict voting and are now legally protected from voting discrimination.
Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed (on the reasoning that this is about choosing who to promote your message to, not in any way affecting who can vote or independently search about election issues--which is presumably why age and gender are allowed).
> Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed
Easy: as already mentioned advertisers love targeting. On the other hand, considering the current sentiment in society allowing gender and age as targeting category causes much less of an outcry (or even shitstorm) than race and religion. So, to balance earning vs risk for reputation damage the first two categories are allowed for advertising targeting while the latter two are not.
I see the sentiment often from people who want a categorically clear legal system.
The answer is that these choices are often made taking into account real world situations. Not just theory. When different rights come into conflicts, the courts weigh them against each other, and take into account the magnitude of the real world impact.
Ban all for a logical simplicity sounds appealing, but the courts frequently find that this would lead to a greater Injustice then mixed decisions.
It's fascinating. I'm at home and my pi-hole ad-blocking rules apparently trigger for that page, so although I can see the titles, all the images just fail to load.
Readit News
2020: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR123656109299...
2024: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR104621681140...
Looks like it's primarily the "location" demographic that is actually different. Neither ad excludes any demographics for Age or Gender but the 2024 includes specific locations for advertisements. So maybe fewer people in Europe and elsewhere seeing American political ads, which I'd assume is preferred by the advertisers. I can see how that would compound to this effect; fewer valuable targets and more value per target.
(Another thing I notice is the ad run length. The 2020 ads ran for a single day (with over 10M views!) and the 2024 ads have been running for weeks or months. Not sure if that's relevant to the expenditure but it's interesting to note.)
However, this law hasn't been updated in decades. So it's still only TV ads that's illegal. So it feels like a quite arbitrary restriction now.
Not saying it should be illegal on other media as well, but I do like the idea of it not being the size of your pockets determining the election. I guess that would be hard to police anyways now, with how influencers can sway stuff without it being an "ad", or how algorithms drive you into a rabbit hole of tailored content anyways.
Political spending is regulated, but we now have "political action committees" that can support candidates but can't coordinate with them. They can accept money from anyone in any amounts. Its brought tons of money from wealthy doners into polics in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
Comedey Centrals Colbert Report (Colbert playing a Conservative pundit) once set one a PAC with a political lawyer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC
I'm not a lawyer..
As someone who is "swing state adjacent", and avoiding them mostly this year, I feel for those under the crush of political ads.
I think the main reason for rules like this is because it's literally politicians and political parties shoveling huge amounts of cash to the media, and 1) one of the purposes of the media is to inform people about politicians and politics, and 2) the politicians who are elected will oversee the media and their mergers. An intimate relationship is created where democracy demands an adversarial one.
It's rotten. It's the same reason no media can criticize any drug in the US, since they were allowed to advertise to the public. I'm sure there's some value in having people ask for specific drugs from their doctors, but that's minimal; the main value is being immune to any criticism unless an e.g. television station wants to lose 20% of their income.
Edit: my bad for generalizing all countries of Europe
> But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
This is not the case. Electoral authorities could oblige all broadcasters to give every candidate a certain number of minutes of broadcast time. That's how they do it in other countries. To hilarious effect sometimes.
The scale of these markets or the spending related thereto is not comparable at all.
What is your point?
I went down a rabbit hole with this particlar ad: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR132650406472...
It links to a website called fultongrandjury.com, which I at first thought would be an official government website, and what initially made me curious was the idea of spending money to advertise a government website, getting this additional credibility. Like, if the facts are so strongly on your side that you merely need to spend ad money to point people to official sources, that's a strong signal.
> Fulton County Jury is a project of Our Community Media, Small Town American Media, and Small Town Truth.
None of these are linked, but they can be found with Google. Our Community Media appears to be a website with stories scraped from Google News, one even has the Google News default image. Small Town America Media claims to support Small Businesses, Telehealth in Rural America and Digital Literacy. Their latest news: Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Political Theater by State Politicians.
Small Town Truth is probably the most inspiring:
> For over 200 Years
> American has fought for truth
> Now....
> We need you to help
They have page dedicated to "discovering truth", telling it apart from "russian fake news"[1] which is copied from and links to a medium post.
None of these websites have information about who's behind them. No person. No address. They have contact pages, but these are just forms, probably to add you to some spam mailing list.
[1]: https://www.smalltowntruth.org/discover-truth
It leads to further rabbit holes I don't have the time to dig into now, but I might later, because now I'm very curious where it leads.
So, searching via that Exempt Organization Search led to a 501(c)(3) letter being issued to Small Town Truth, mailed to a residential address in the care of the "Better Narrative Group" - another "interesting" site[0].
Doing a little more searching, I've found another 501(c)(3) in care of Better Narrative Group: Soul of a Nation Media. Similar setup. In trying to find more information to connect some dots, I found Soul of a Nation Media's taxes were filed by ChurchBiz[1], but this hasn't led to anything interesting.
Both Small Town Truth and Soul of a Nation Media changed addresses to a PO Box in Virginia in 2022.
Oh, and here are another two I just found related to Better Narrative Group: American Volunteer Corps[2], Better Neighbors Network[3].
To not assume malice, maybe it's a concerned citizen trying, in their own way, by establishing these organizations. Something feels off about the sites, though - not much content, a little dead behind the eyes, and I can't put my finger on the actual purpose of the sites. Odd.
[0] https://www.betternarrativegroup.org
[1] https://www.churchbiz.com
[2] https://www.americanvolunteercorps.org/
[3] https://www.betterneighborsnetwork.org/
edit: formatting
Are you being straight serious here, or are you doing a rhetoric thing where "I was confused" is just a shorthand for "I think some people might plausibly be confused"?
I could see some people who aren't net-saavy thinking that domain looks like a government website, but I'm surprised that anybody here might see a .com like that and think it an official anything. Official government websites in America almost always use a .gov, and when they don't they usually have some goofy long string of subdomains like www.courts.state.md.us (I'm not 100% sure that is actually official, but it's in the style government websites use and if an unofficial website used that style I'd definitely consider it an attempt to deceive people.)
I think there are specific reasons behind each of these, but the fact is that I am used to interacting with government websites that end in .com, so it wouldn't surprise me if some county's court system also used a .com.
https://www.publicdemocracy.io/scottshalett
I stayed at a guy's airbnb in Denver. He was in breach of his renting agreement by hosting the airbnb and had previously spent about a year in jail (forget for what). He said he had 2 websites that he was promoting on Facebook and were making him money. On one website he posted lots of pro-Trump content and on the other he posted lots of pro-Bernie Sanders content. This was during the primaries so these articles were largely in opposition to Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. He said he didn't care about either candidate but both websites were making him good money in ad revenue. He was not actually affiliated with either party.
I wouldn't be surprised if he or someone else like him had scaled up their efforts.
Dead Comment
[1] https://adstransparency.google.com/political?region=US&topic...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22force+vector+communicatio...
The Citizens United vs FEC ruling is a sham.
Specifically, if you perform a `whois` on email-comply.com, you can find
andhttps://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a...
They also have an aggregate report page. It doesn't seem possible to break it down by ad category, but looks like the most recent big spenders are all political ads:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/
I searched for some ads for a congressional race in 2018, obviously inactive, and they were all there, but I couldn't view them because: "This content was removed because the disclaimer didn’t follow our policy for ads about social issues, elections or politics."
For what conceivable reason would they block historical ads, ads that actually ran in the past but are no longer active? Those ads probably didn't meet the disclaimer rules because the rules were different back in 2018.
Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed (on the reasoning that this is about choosing who to promote your message to, not in any way affecting who can vote or independently search about election issues--which is presumably why age and gender are allowed).
Easy: as already mentioned advertisers love targeting. On the other hand, considering the current sentiment in society allowing gender and age as targeting category causes much less of an outcry (or even shitstorm) than race and religion. So, to balance earning vs risk for reputation damage the first two categories are allowed for advertising targeting while the latter two are not.
Advertisers love it.
It’s also why it gets banned when it gets used to hurt people too much.
The answer is that these choices are often made taking into account real world situations. Not just theory. When different rights come into conflicts, the courts weigh them against each other, and take into account the magnitude of the real world impact.
Ban all for a logical simplicity sounds appealing, but the courts frequently find that this would lead to a greater Injustice then mixed decisions.