Digital Advertising Expenditures in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

Using 2012 and 2016 candidate disbursements and independent expenditures filing data collected by the Federal Election Commission, this study compares how much money both the presidential campaigns and outside groups spent on digital relative to traditional media. Digital campaign expenditures have increased their share of total media outlays markedly over recent election cycles, and in the 2016 presidential election, both the candidate and independent expenditures were higher than in 2012, particularly on the Republican side. This article investigates reasons for these trends and establishes a baseline for future research on the heretofore understudied topic of digital political advertising.

Keywords

presidential campaigns online political ads new media environment campaign technology innovation multichannel marketing

The 2016 campaign for the U.S. presidency may be remembered for its variety of unconventional practices and outcomes. One practice that remained the same as in past presidential elections, however, is that the largest category of campaign expenditures was for advertising and media production. Presidential candidates typically allocate over half of their campaign expenditures to television (TV) advertising buys and the 2016 presidential election was no exception. OpenSecrets.org reports that Hillary Clinton’s campaign allocated 60% and Donald Trump’s campaign allocated 58% of their campaign expenditures to media (for Hillary Clinton’s campaign expenditure allocations, see http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/expenditures?id=N00000019; and for Donald Trump’s campaign expenditure allocations, see https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/expenditures?id=N00023864).

What might be unconventional about media expenditures in 2016 is that the two campaigns relied less on TV advertising and focused more on digital advertising. Candidates and campaigns now find themselves in a new media environment that is challenging old assumptions about the best marketing strategy and allocation of resources. Although we know that candidates have been spending more on digital advertising each election cycle (Kaye, 2017; Lapowsky, 2015), so far, there is no published empirical academic research documenting which candidates and other campaign organizations have shifted their advertising priorities, when, and by how much. Yet, we know that political consultants are advising their clients to do so, with several firms on the leading edge of this shift (Johnson, 2016). Marketing research studies already have made a case for moving retail advertising budgets away from a TV dominated strategy to a multichannel one with significantly increased expenditures on online advertising (Newman, 2016).

This article investigates the evidence for such a shift in presidential campaigns. While there is a substantial and growing literature on the adoption and use of digital tools in political campaigns generally, specific research on digital political advertising has emphasized its content and effects on citizens’ opinions and behaviors or other political actors, such as the news media. Given the prevalent role of super political action committees (PACs) in recent elections, it is also important to investigate the so far understudied digital media investments made by outside groups, a further task we undertake in this article. An additional but important contribution of the present work is establishing a baseline for digital political advertising from which scholars can assess and understand whether, to what degree, and how it is changing the strategic decisions that political candidates, parties, and outside groups make in conducting their election campaigns.

Advertising and Campaigns

Payments for advertising and media production are the largest category of campaign expenditures for a typical candidate for the U.S. presidency (Wayne, 2016) or Congress (Hernnson, 2015). In the most recent presidential elections, both the Republican and Democratic nominees for president allocated over 50% of their campaign expenditures to media production and advertising buys, the bulk of which was for TV advertising. Donald Trump’s campaign for president spent nearly 58% of its budget on media. Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s campaign dedicated 60% of its expenditures to media. While there was more of a gap between the candidates in 2012 (i.e., 67% for Barack Obama vs. 54% for Mitt Romney), the conclusion still holds that presidential candidates spend a great deal of money on media and it is their largest campaign expense.¹ Congressional campaigns evidence a similar allocation of resources (Hernnson, 2015).

Campaigns allocate so much money to advertising because it is the most efficient way to communicate with large numbers of voters and gain electoral support (Diamond & Bates, 1993). Furthermore, campaigns believe that these advertisements have an impact in persuading and mobilizing voters. Research on the impact that TV advertising has on voters’ behavior and election outcomes has been inconclusive, however. Early research found the effects of advertising and the campaign in general had a minimal effect on individuals’ voting decisions; instead, media played a large role in activating and reinforcing views (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Klapper, 1960; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944). Later research concluded that the media’s impact on voters’ choices was indirect in the form of agenda setting (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987), framing (Iyengar, 1991), and learning (Ridout, Shah, Goldstein, & Franz, 2004). In addition, candidates used advertising to direct voters to focus on traits and issues favorable to themselves and unfavorable to their opponents (Abbe, Goodliffe, Herrnson, & Patterson, 2003; Brader, 2005; Valentino, Hutchings, & Williams, 2006). Studies found that negative advertising made citizens more cynical about the political process and, as a result, demobilized voter turnout among an opponent’s supporters (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995). Evidence also showed that the effects of advertising were conditional, having differential impact on voters depending on their level of political knowledge and sophistication (Huber & Arceneaux, 2007; Ridout & Franz, 2011; Zaller, 1992) and level of exposure to the ads (Freedman & Goldstein, 1999).

More recent research of advertising effects on voters’ decisions has shown evidence of persuasion (Franz & Ridout, 2010), but the effects are short-lived (Gerber, Gimpel, Green, & Shaw, 2011). A reason why observed effects are so elusive in presidential races is that voters already know so much about the major candidates that TV ads offer little that is new to induce individuals to change their feelings and predisposition to vote for (or against) a candidate (Fowler, Franz, & Ridout, 2015). While these ads still may have an effect on less informed and undecided individuals, those potential voters are exposed to messages from both campaigns, which could make the net effect of changes in voter sentiments close to zero (Finkel, 1993).

The New Media Environment

Assuming that advertising can affect some voters’ decisions, at least under certain conditions, advertising effects presume exposure. In other words, individuals either actually watched the ads or encountered discussion of them in other media or through interpersonal contacts. That exposure is occurring in a U.S. media landscape that has been fragmenting for quite sometime (Baker, 2007). This continuous media fragmentation² has eroded the single-channel dominance of TV for content delivery. A multichannel marketing approach that includes new platforms encompassing cable TV, websites, social media, and e-mail (Kaye, 2017) is supplanting broadcast TV and other traditional advertising approaches such as radio, print, telemarketing, and direct mail.

In addition, the number of hours that Americans consume live and linear TV³ continues to decline in favor of time-shifting devices such as prerecorded digital video recorders and video on demand devices. Indeed, in 2012, 55% of all registered voters reported going online to watch political videos and 52% recommended an online video to others (Smith & Duggan, 2012). U.S. daily video views on YouTube and Facebook have more than doubled since 2012, and YouTube reported a 485% growth in candidate- and issue-related video watch time between April 2015 and February 2016 alone (http://digitalnewsreport.org/publications/2016/predictions-2016/ and https://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/The_Presidential_Elections_On_YouTube.pdf). In addition, many Americans have shifted to subscription-based streaming services, and a growing number have dropped their cable TV service. While these changes are most pronounced among younger individuals, the declines are increasing among Americans between the ages 30 and 49 as well (The Nielsen Total Audience Report, 2016). Because of these changes in the ways that Americans watch TV in today’s media environment, an advertising campaign that continues to rely on broadcast TV or any single platform will have difficulty reaching the desired number and kinds of audiences.

Campaigns that understand how media and audience practices are evolving can more easily apply the marketing narrowcasting and microtargeting tools⁴ that can allow them to reach specific audiences and tailor advertising content for them via digital platforms and niche cable stations (Newman, 2016). To adjust to these changes, political campaign consultants and analysts have urged candidates to consider investing more of their media budget to distribution by e-mail and other online platforms (Johnson, 2016). New digital tools and services allow campaigns to target specific voter groups more efficiently and to specify how the ad will be displayed and whether a video advertisement can be skipped (Kaye, 2015; Rayport, 2015). For millennials, moreover, digital ads seem to be essential not only for persuasion but for engagement and mobilization where canvassing and other traditional get out the vote tactics have been shown to be ineffective (Miller, 2016).

Since the 1988 elections, mass media campaigns have given way to what Howard (2006) characterizes as the hypermedia campaign.⁵ The campaigns and other political organizations that are successful in adapting to this media environment are those with both the capacity for innovatively adopting digital technologies to their political purposes and adapting their organizational structure to conform to these new communicative practices. More broadly, older media practices adapt and integrate the logics of newer media practices in a hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013).

Private sector businesses often lead the way in adopting new technologies to improve efficiency and achieve their strategic objectives. Advertising trend data illustrate the point. Expectations for TV ad spending in 2017 surpass US$72 billion or 35.8% of total media ad spending in the United States (“Digital Ad Spending,” 2016). Meanwhile, total digital ad spending in 2017 will surpass US$77 billion or 38.4% of total ad spending. Although in the long term, TV advertising spending by retailers will continue to grow by about 2% a year, more advertising dollars will flow to digital as a way of optimizing spending in challenging economic times (“Digital Ad Spending,” 2016). In contrast, digital media expenditures represented only 9.5% of political campaigns’ overall advertising budget in 2016 (Lapowski, 2015). The 2016 presidential election may represent a takeoff point, however, since the projection by Borrell Associates was US$1.1 billion, and actual outlays reached US$1.4 billion, a 14% market share that represents a nearly 800% increase in digital ad spending over the 2012 presidential election year (see http://www.wsj.com/articles/tv-remains-king-in-political-ad-spending-1440978256; and Figure 1). This is despite the fact that advertising price per click is decreasing on Yahoo and flattening for Facebook between 2012 and 2016 (although Google did show a significant increase over the same period; see http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-q4-2016-earnings/302378/; https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/how-yahoo-bing-costs-per-click-compare; and https://www.hochmanconsultants.com/cost-of-ppc-advertising/).

Figure 1.

Total U.S. online/digital political ad spending in millions, 2008–2016. Data sources: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/digital-politcal-ads-2016/ and http://adage.com/article/media/2016-political-broadcast-tv-spend-20-cable-52/307346/

Although the amount that candidates are spending on digital advertising is increasing and poised to set a new record in 2016 (see Figure 1), there has yet to be any research on whether candidates and other campaign organizations are shifting their advertising priorities. With fewer limits on contributions and almost no limits on expenditures, well-endowed candidates and their outside groups simply may be spending more on all forms of advertising rather than prioritizing digital channels.

The Multichannel Marketing Model

Drawing again from the lessons of retail marketing, we find that companies selling branded products and services market them over both online and off-line channels, which can complement one another or be executed in isolation (Hoffman, Novak, & Chatterjee, 1995). There is evidence that more channels can reach more and new customers with the result that sales typically increase (e.g., Friedman & Furey, 1999, for a review). Arguably, some of the objectives of a political campaign’s marketing strategy are similar to those of retailers (see Cwalina, Falkowski, & Newman, 2011, for a discussion). Both face the difficulty of determining the correct, if not optimal, allocation of finite resources among the available channels.

Schoenbachler and Gordon (2002) observe that the decision whether to include multiple channels or retain a single channel (such as TV in our campaign case) at the risk of being obsolete and left behind by multichannel competitors is a critical one for retailers. We argue that political campaigns’ decisions about how to appeal to the electorate for their votes also pose risks. Campaigns likewise have multiple channels through which to promote their candidate, a media channel allocation decision that impacts and is impacted by their strategic choices around market niche and reach (e.g., narrowcasting and microtargeting), ad placement, and content.

According to Draganska, Hartmann, and Stanglein (2014), many advertisers are reluctant to shift a large portion of their advertising budget to the Internet because they still view TV as the main vehicle for building a brand. Yet, their study of advertising campaigns by 20 firms in different industries found that Internet ads performed on a par with TV ads on the brand building metric used and trusted by advertisers. They also find a synergy effect for multimedia campaigns over an Internet-only campaign.

Of particular interest for examining our research question is how to determine the correct if not optimal allocation of advertising expenditures between online and traditional media. Briggs, Krishnan, and Borin (2005) found that ad exposure increased by 20% when reallocating expenditures for TV to magazines and online media. Although TV has more reach, online and magazines are very selective and efficient, leading the authors to conclude that a media diversification strategy pays off. The case analysis by Naik and Peters (2009) adds more specificity to decisions about how to allocate advertising budgets. They determined that the optimal online advertising point is 14% of the total optimal budget or double the current 7% allocated by their firm. They also concluded that the firm’s 90% allocation to off-line advertising should be reduced to 78%, a recommendation shared by Danaher and Dagger (2013).

Based on this marketing research, it makes sense for candidates to shift their advertising budgets from a TV dominated strategy to a multichannel one with significantly increased expenditures on online advertising. This article investigates the evidence for such a shift in presidential campaigns.

The Digital Innovation Literature

While there is now a wealth of research on the adoption and use of digital tools in political campaigns, specific research on digital advertising is limited. Studies of web campaigning (see Gibson, 2012, for a review) show that in the early stages of adoption, incumbents were less likely than challengers to campaign on the web, but a competitive race increased its use by incumbents and challengers alike (Foot & Schneider, 2006; Herrnson, Stokes-Brown, & Hindman, 2007; Kamarck, 2002). Candidates strapped for resources or at a fundraising disadvantage relative to their opponent also were less likely to have a campaign website then (Gibson, Margolis, Resnick, & Ward, 2003), but this has proved less of a barrier subsequently. Greater financial resources and major party status still differentiate which campaigns incorporate the latest technology and features, however (Foot & Schneider, 2006; Strandberg, 2009).

Generally, similar factors have proved important to social media adoption by campaigns. Studies found early adopters of these platforms to be challengers, better financed candidates, and candidates running in competitive races (Gulati & Williams, 2013). Although Democrats were more likely than Republicans to be Facebook adopters (Gulati & Williams, 2013), other research found that Republicans and challengers had a greater propensity to adopt Twitter (Gainous & Wagner, 2014; Peterson, 2012). An historical analysis by Kreiss (2016) suggests that, at least for presidential campaigns, Democrats had an initial new technology adoption and investment advantage, but learning from their losses to Obama, Republicans began to see its embrace as a prototype for a new type of electoral campaign, much as Howard’s (2006) and Chadwick’s (2013) work anticipates.

Little if any existing scholarship on digital political advertising focuses on adoption, emphasizing instead its content and effects on citizens’ opinions and behaviors or those of other entities (e.g., the news media’s agenda). To illustrate, Ballard, Hillygus, and Konitzer (2016) examine the content of display ads; Ridout, Fowler, and Branstetter (2012) describe the content of YouTube ads and impact on news media agenda setting; and Jungherr (2016) offers a comprehensive review of Twitter adoption, use, and impact studies.

Although there are studies investigating the use of narrowcasting and microtargeting of media expenditures to reach desired geographic and demographic audiences through programming and media market allocation decisions for TV (see Ridout, 2014, for a review), there is little if any published research on this for digital ad placement and expenditures. This study heeds Barnard and Kreiss’s (2013) general call for new scholarship on digital political advertising. In their view, existing literature is remiss for failing to apply the study of source effects to digital political ads now that super PACs have assumed such a large role in recent elections. They recommend utilizing Federal Election Commission (FEC) data to document industry trends and shed light on the practices of its clients, the campaign organizations, and outside groups. These are the directions we pursue in this article. Specifically, our study seeks to uncover how much money was spent on digital media in the 2016 presidential campaign and how these expenditures compare with digital media expenditures in 2012. We also seek to uncover the difference in expenditure patterns on digital media between the candidates and the outside groups that have become more prominent in presidential elections in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Finally, we want to examine any differences in expenditure patterns among political parties, established candidates and groups, and political “outsiders.”

Data

We obtained the data to answer our research questions from the candidate disbursements and independent expenditures files for 2012 and 2016 collected by the FEC.⁶ The candidate files included 224,516 individual entries of expenditure report filings made by the candidates in 2012 and 287,497 entries in 2016. The independent expenditure files included 54,134 individual entries of expenditure report filings made by any outside group supporting or opposing a presidential candidate in 2012 and 81,200 entries in 2016. These filings included nearly 50,000 unique category entries that we sorted and organized to aggregate digital media expenditures and all other media expenditures for every candidate who filed papers with the FEC. We classified an entry as a digital media expenditure if it included the terms digital, Internet, or e-mail in the “purpose” field of the FEC report filings. If the field included multiple purposes but also specified digital, Internet, or e-mail, we still assigned the entry to the new media category. If, however, these entries were specifically for expenditures, such as Internet or e-mail services, we considered them to be similar to electric, telephone, cable TV, and other utilities services and did not classify them as digital media expenditures.

Our analysis of the data begins with a comparison of how much money the major party candidates spent on media in 2012 and 2016 and the amounts and percentages spent on traditional and digital media. We restrict the analysis to expenditures beginning on July 1 of the election year to focus specifically on the competitive general election campaigns and to allow for better comparisons between campaign years. Additional analysis includes the full 2015–2016 filing period and all candidates who ran for president and reported expenditures to the FEC.

Analysis

Candidate Expenditures

Our analysis of the data from the candidate disbursement files shows a substantial increase in the amount that the two major party candidates for president spent on digital media (see Table 1). Whereas Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent nearly US$77 million on digital media during the 2012 general election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spent nearly US$104 million in 2016. This represents an increase of 35% from 2012 to 2016. These combined numbers mask some important partisan differences, however. In 2012, President Obama outspent his Republican opponent on digital media by less than US$10 million, US$43.2 million versus US$33.7 million. In 2016, the Grand Old Party (GOP, Republican Party) nominee Mr. Trump not only outspent his Democratic opponent by 400% (US$83.5 million vs. US$20.2 million) but also surpassed by almost 200% what President Obama spent 4 years earlier. Moreover, Secretary Clinton spent half of what President Obama spent on digital in 2012.

Table 1.

Presidential Campaign Expenditures by Media Type, 2012 and 2016 General Elections (July 1 to November 30).

Candidate	Total Expenditures	Total Media Expenditures	Amount	% Total Expenditures	% Total Media Expenditures
2012
Barack Obama (D)	US$488,014,774	US$376,382,296	US$43,230,421	8.9	11.5
Mitt Romney (R)	US$325,294,457	US$199,736,243	US$33,722,939	10.4	16.9
2016
Hillary Clinton (D)	US$348,051,714	US$252,866,041	US$20,208,872	5.8	8
Donald Trump (R)	US$176,882,315	US$176,882,315	US$83,547,877	30.7	47.2

Note. R = Republican; D = Democrat.

While expenditures on digital media substantially increased, expenditures on traditional media substantially decreased. In 2012, the two major party candidates spent almost US$500 million on traditional media for the general election. In 2016, Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump spent only US$326 million on traditional media, that is, about one third less than what was spent in 2012. The drop in traditional media spending from 2012 is mostly a result of Donald Trump’s unconventional campaign strategy that relied heavily on earned media coverage (Patterson, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). However, the Clinton campaign also spent less on traditional media in 2016 than President Obama did in 2012. Whereas President Obama spent over US$333 million on traditional media in 2012, Secretary Clinton spent US$233 million in 2016. Mitt Romney spent US$166 million, while Donald Trump spent less than US$100 million. On the surface, these numbers provide little evidence that greater expenditures on TV advertising is a contributor to electoral success. President Obama outspent Governor Romney by a 2:1 margin to win reelection by only three points. Secretary Clinton, moreover, outspent Mr. Trump by an even larger margin to win the popular vote by only two points but win less than 50% of the popular vote and also lose in the Electoral College.

Another way to show the increasing role of digital media in presidential campaigns is to calculate the proportion of expenditures on digital media relative to total expenditures and to media expenditures as a whole. As can be seen in the fifth column of Table 1, both President Obama and Governor Romney used approximately 10% of their campaign expenditures on digital media for the 2012 presidential campaign. Governor Romney’s media campaign relied slightly more on digital as it represented 17% of media expenditures compared to 11% of President Obama’s media expenditures (see the last column of Table 1).

The trajectory of digital media in 2016 was somewhat ambiguous. Whereas 31% of Donald Trump’s campaign expenditures were for digital media, only 6% of Hillary Clinton’s expenditures were for digital. Moreover, whereas almost 50% of Mr. Trump’s media expenditures were for digital, only 8% of Secretary Clinton’s media expenditures were for digital. So although Secretary Clinton outspent Mr. Trump by US$75 million on media, it is quite possible that Mr. Trump’s heavy reliance on digital media allowed for a more efficient and targeted ad campaign that escaped the eye of both the media and the Clinton campaign.

Although both Governor Romney and Mr. Trump dedicated a higher proportion of media expenditures to digital media than their Democratic counterparts, the evidence is somewhat inconclusive on whether these changes are the result of a differences in partisan strategies or differences in the strategies of the specific candidates. Examining the expenditure patterns of the other candidates provides some insight.

On the Democratic side, as shown in Table 2, 13% of Bernie Sanders’s campaign expenditures were for digital media, with digital accounting for 24% of all media expenditures. On the Republican side, only Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and John Kasich spent over 10% on digital, but several of the GOP candidates allocated over one fourth of their media expenditures to digital media. Among the viable candidates, Rand Paul (80%), Ben Carson (44%), Carly Fiorina (34%), and John Kasich (34%) allocated over one third of their media expenditures to digital media. Ted Cruz also allocated a significant percentage to digital (16%). Of these candidates, only Senator Paul came close to Mr. Trump in terms of the percentage of total expenditures that were for digital media (22%). Among the second-tier candidates, Mike Huckabee (73%), Scott Walker (64%), and Rick Santorum (55%) allocated over half of their media expenditures to digital. Note also that among the GOP field, the “establishment” candidates Jeb Bush (11%), Marco Rubio (0.3%), and Chris Christie (3%) allocated the smallest percentage of media expenditures to digital.

Table 2.

Presidential Expenditures by Media Type, 2015–2016 Reporting Period.

			Digital Media Expenditures
Candidate	Total Expenditures	Total Media Expenditures	Amount	% of Total Expenditures	% of Total Media Expenditures
Democrats
Hillary Clinton	US$575,881,348	US$359,019,131	US$32,816,682	5.7	9.1
Bernard Sanders	US$226,527,256	US$118,355,788	US$28,773,803	12.7	24.3
Martin O’Malley	US$5,700,450	US$308,712	US$245,510	4.3	79.5
James Webb	US$821,425	US$29,659	US$2,694	0.3	9.1
Lawrence Lessig	US$437,679	US$181,429	US$52,355	12.0	28.9
Republicans
Donald Trump	US$348,868,139	US$202,429,121	US$87,841,134	25.2	43.4
Ted Cruz	US$86,962,787	US$31,004,716	US$4,958,243	5.7	16.0
Marco Rubio	US$45,980,546	US$19,106,972	US$52,894	0.1	0.3
Benjamin Carson	US$61,443,126	US$11,390,096	US$4,981,531	8.1	43.7
John Kasich	US$18,658,051	US$5,644,412	US$1,902,350	10.2	33.7
Jeb Bush	US$34,720,234	US$5,204,269	US$573,118	1.7	11.0
Rand Paul	US$11,862,667	US$3,207,686	US$2,566,306	21.6	80.0
Carly Fiorina	US$10,900,906	US$2,777,534	US$957,803	8.8	34.5
Chris Christie	US$8,563,486	US$960,860	US$31,797	0.4	3.3
Lindsey Graham	US$5,535,680	US$567,536	US$144,912	2.6	25.5
Scott Walker	US$11,268,635	US$521,880	US$333,313	3.0	63.9
Rick Perry	US$2,017,068	US$268,172	US$61,250	3.0	22.8
Mike Huckabee	US$4,801,625	US$215,886	US$157,399	3.3	72.9
Richard Santorum	US$2,084,162	US$137,352	US$75,072	3.6	54.7
Bobby Jindal	US$1,413,405	US$47,837	US$8,700	0.6	18.2
George Pataki	US$525,604	US$17,841	US$521	0.1	2.9
James Gilmore	US$384,427	US$11,900	0	0.0	0.0
Others
Gary Johnson (L)	US$11,328,086	US$6,126,702	US$76,233	0.7	1.2
Jill Stein (G)	US$3,403,674	US$971,050	US$314,278	9.2	32.4
Evan McMullin (I)	US$1,644,335	US$216,957	US$123,824	7.5	57.1

Note. L = Libertarian; G = Green; I = Independent.

Among the third-party and independent candidates, Green Party nominee Jill Stein allocated 32% of her media expenditures to digital and independent Evan McMullin allocated 57%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, previously a Republican with a Republican running mate, allocated just 1% of his media expenditures to digital. The pattern that emerges from these numbers is that Republicans were more likely to integrate digital advertising as part of their larger communication strategy.

Our findings suggest a clear embrace by outsider candidates Donald Trump in 2016, and arguably Barack Obama in 2008, accompanied by a lack of awareness among established candidates on how the media landscape has been transformed in the last few election cycles. It is not clear whether the proper designation for this group should be outsider or “challenger” for purposes of comparison with the variable concept tested in other adoption studies (Foot & Schneider, 2006; Herrnson et al., 2007). Incumbents do not merely hold office, they represent the establishment and have an advantaged competitive position (e.g., name recognition, funding) that makes them more viable candidates than others contesting their party’s nomination. To the extent that the status outsider and challenger are conceptually similar (though not empirically equivalent measures) in a presidential nominating contest, it makes sense they would show a greater propensity to adopt new technologies as evidenced here by higher expenditures on digital ads.

Independent Expenditures

Analysis of the data from the independent expenditure files also shows a substantial increase in the amount that super PACs and other outside groups spent on digital media to support or oppose the two major party presidential candidates. Whereas outside groups supporting and opposing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent over US$56 million on digital media during the 2012 general election, outside groups for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spent nearly US$164 million in 2016. This represents an increase of approximately 200% from 2012 to 2016. This large increase is a result of outside groups working on the behalf of Donald Trump, however, who spent over US$153 million independent of the Trump campaign (see Table 3). This is more than the combined amount groups working on behalf of Barack Obama (US$33.9 million) and Mitt Romney (US$22.6 million) spent. Outside groups working on behalf of Hillary Clinton spent only US$10.7 million on digital media for the 2016 general election.

Table 3.

Outside Groups Expenditures by Media Type on Behalf of Presidential Candidates, 2012 and 2016 General Elections (July 1 to November 30).

			Outside Group Digital Media Expenditures
Candidate	Total Outside Groups Expenditures	Total Outside Group Media Expenditures	Amount	% Total Expenditures	% Total Media Expenditures
2012
Barack Obama (D)	US$416,841,665	US$367,732,507	US$33,869,172	8.1	9.2
Mitt Romney (R)	US$144,075,583	US$122,956,398	US$22,556,223	15.7	18.3
2016
Hillary Clinton (D)	US$142,613,658	US$105,616,936	US$10,674,367	7.5	10.1
Donald Trump (R)	US$350,609,022	US$325,117,789	US$153,373,931	43.7	47.2

Note. R = Republican; D = Democrat.

As was the case with the candidates, the amount that outside groups spent on traditional media for the general election decreased substantially between 2012 and 2016. In 2012, outside groups supporting the two major party candidates spent over US$434 million on traditional media for the general election. In 2016, outside groups spent only US$266 million on traditional media on behalf of the Republican and Democratic nominees, almost 40% less than what was spent in the previous election.

Examining the proportion of expenditures by outside groups on digital media relative to total expenditures and media expenditures as a whole further reinforces the increasing role of digital media in presidential campaigns and also shows that digital advertising today is more a part of the Republican media strategy than of the Democrats’. As can be seen in the fifth column of Table 3, outside groups working on behalf of President Obama allocated approximately 8% of their independent expenditures to digital media. In addition, outside groups working on behalf of Governor Romney allocated nearly 16% of their independent expenditures to digital media. In 2016, outside groups working on behalf of Hillary Clinton allocated just under 8% of their independent expenditures to digital media. Only 10% of their media expenditures were for digital. In contrast, outside groups working on behalf of Donald Trump allocated nearly 44% of their independent expenditures to digital media, which represented 47% of all their media expenditures. While the 2008 Obama campaign and the Democrats have been lauded for their introduction of digital media and other digital tools to engage voters (Bimber, 2014; Carpenter, 2010; Kreiss & Jasinski, 2016), at the presidential level, the Republicans in 2016 seem to have embraced a multichannel, multiplatform means of engaging the American electorate more fully.

An examination of the outside spending on behalf of the other 2016 candidates seems to support the conclusion that Republicans currently are embracing digital advertising faster than Democrats. As shown in Table 4, outside groups supporting Bernie Sanders used only 9% of their expenditures for digital, which represented nearly 23% of all media expenditures. Both of these numbers surpass the amount spent on behalf of President Obama in 2012. Among Republicans, outsider candidates Donald Trump (41%), Ted Cruz (23%), and Ben Carson (16%) received substantial support in expenditures from digital media. For Dr. Carson, moreover, digital media expenditures accounted for 61% of total media expenditures. Among the establishment candidates, outside groups supporting Governor Christie allocated 40% of their expenditures to digital media. The other establishment candidates received little support through digital media, however. Outside groups supporting Senator Rubio allocated 6% to digital media, followed by 5% for Governor Kasich and 2% each for Senator Paul and Governor Bush. Together, these results show that a new brand of Republicans and their allies are leading the way on digital advertising.

Table 4.

Outside Group Expenditures by Media Type on Behalf of Presidential Candidates, 2015–2016 Reporting Period.

			Digital Media Expenditures
Candidate	Total Expenditures	Total Media Expenditures	Amount	% of Total Expenditures	% of Total Media Expenditures
Democrats
Hillary Clinton	US$161,387,158	US$115,574,175	US$17,618,121	10.9	15.2
Bernard Sanders	US$4,804,160	US$1,967,905	US$447,527	9.3	22.7
Martin O’Malley	US$940,641	US$914,763	US$163,888	17.4	17.9
Republicans
Donald Trump	US$380,427,958	US$354,089,187	US$156,121,072	41.0	44.1
Jeb Bush	US$84,208,728	US$79,815,793	US$1,281,168	1.5	1.6
Ted Cruz	US$26,196,123	US$22,360,239	US$5,136,764	19.6	23.0
John Kasich	US$23,102,776	US$21,544,493	US$1,097,854	4.8	5.1
Chris Christie	US$19,328,418	US$18,542,011	US$7,633,676	39.5	41.2
Marco Rubio	US$9,304,527	US$6,796,039	US$513,105	5.5	7.6
Rand Paul	US$9,137,015	US$4,694,397	US$167,374	1.8	3.6
Benjamin Carson	US$6,735,794	US$1,750,195	US$1,061,765	15.8	60.7
Bobby Jindal	US$4,703,241	US$4,703,241	US$13	0.0	0.0
Scott Walker	US$4,587,114	US$4,252,878	US$4,212,309	91.8	99.0
Lindsey Graham	US$3,499,670	US$3,499,670	US$32,891	0.9	0.9
Carly Fiorina	US$3,473,389	US$2,928,173	US$763,331	22.0	26.1
Mike Huckabee	US$2,989,334	US$2,307,019	US$81,734	2.7	3.5
Rick Perry	US$2,003,282	US$1,982,041	US$4,051	0.2	0.2
Richard Santorum	US$241,303	US$202,700	US$111,246	46.1	54.9
George Pataki	US$122,511	US$120,411	0	—	—
Others
Gary Johnson (L)	US$3,426,407	US$3,314,133	US$2,775,200	81.0	83.7
Evan McMullin (I)	US$22,627	US$14,714	US$7,679	33.9	52.1

Note. L = Libertarian; I = Independent.

Discussion

There are several interpretations for our various findings. First, we have seen an increasing trend line for digital campaign expenditures generally (Figure 1) and from the 2012 to 2016 presidential election specifically. Bimber (2014) argues that at the presidential level, where resources for campaigns are enormous, innovations adopted in one cycle are soon matched in subsequent cycles in good part because of the networks that political consultants share (Kreiss, 2016). And the 2016 presidential contest was not only heavily funded but also very competitive, two factors our literature review showed were positive predictors of campaign technology adoption.

Regarding party differences in digital campaign expenditures, we note that losing elections is an important stimulus for changing campaign strategy (Appleton & Ward, 1997) and adopting a new prototype (Kreiss, 2016), represented in our argument by multichannel marketing. Second, as our review of website and social media adoption documents, challengers, or, in this case, the White House out party have greater incentive to innovate. The finding is also consistent with the out-party innovation incentives thesis (Mayhew, 1974) and research findings that support it (e.g., Vaccari, 2013; Karpf, 2009, 2013). Other research on ideologically extreme (Peterson, 2012) and outsider groups (Bimber, Flanagin, & Stohl, 2012; Karpf, 2012) documents a similar predilection for adopting “disruptive innovations.”

Finally, although the percentage of media expenditures allocated by both parties for digital ads increased from 2012 to 2016, it was far greater for Republicans than for Democrats. As suggested above, this may be an election-specific finding tied to this cycle’s Republican nominee Donald Trump. It is difficult to judge whether the similar jump in digital ad allocation by his outside group supporters should be attributed to partisan or ideological proclivities such as Kreiss (2016) proposes or to the business orientation and background of the candidate. Our data on the earlier and more extensive adoption of digital and multichannel advertising by retailers offers support for an argument that Trump’s campaign created a new prototype and employed consultants and advisors from a different set of networks and skill set than those traditionally relied upon by the Republican Party or presidential candidates generally. This is a plausible explanation, given the well-documented tensions and strained relationships between Trump and the mainstream Republican establishment (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/donald-trump-rnc-reince-priebus.html?_r=0; and http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/17/trump_staff_shift_elevates_gop_leaders_archenemy_131536.html). A parallel argument might be made in reverse about Obama creating a new prototype in 2008 that Clinton overlooked to her own campaign’s disadvantage in 2016. Over the long term, however, we can expect that, as Bimber (2014) argues, the commodification of digital tools, increasing recognition of their utility, and uniform understanding of the contemporary media environment will mean less variation between campaigns. Once a new prototype becomes established, it persists until another set of forces creates incentives for further innovation.

Future Directions

We recognize the limitation of analyzing FEC archival data for only two presidential election cycles. As noted, party differences in technology shifted from the early Democratic advantage to a Republican one more recently and could shift again or disappear by 2020. An important contribution of the present work has been to establish a baseline to which subsequent years can be compared.

Another step is to examine digital advertising spending trends for other levels of office, a data collection, and analysis effort we have begun for the 2014 and 2016 Congressional elections. This is important for two reasons: first, campaigns for lower offices operate in different electoral environments and under different constraints; and second, a larger number of legislative contests and hence candidates offer more data points for multivariate analyses. Indeed, Rackaway (2007) and Lynch and Rozell (2002) suggest that it takes a cycle or two for new technologies adopted in presidential races to trickle down to Congressional campaigns and those for state-level offices lag further behind.

Just as research into campaign websites, other online and social media platforms moved from adoption studies to their use and impact, scholars should appropriate the theoretical questions, methods, and lessons for the study of digital advertising. Is it changing the conduct and results of political campaigns and elections? The behavior of candidates, parties, outside groups, and voters? If there are changes, do they improve or undermine democratic elections and institutions and their representation of, and accountability to, citizens?

Finally, archival, and in this case FEC, data are but one source to be mined in search of these answers. It joins a host of other widely utilized tools that includes field interviews, survey research, experiments, and some newly emerging ones, notably big data analytics. Scholars in this field are poised to embark on a tall research agenda.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

We acknowledge and thank two student research assistants, Mateusz Zeglen and Christopher McKay, for helping to collect, clean, and code the data for this project.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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