Harris, With an Online Avalanche, Outspends Trump by Tens of Millions

The week of their debate, Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump by 20 to 1 on Facebook and Instagram. It was just one sign of how uneven their online advertising battle has become.

Vice President Kamala Harris outspent former President Donald J. Trump by 20 to 1 on Facebook and Instagram in the week surrounding their debate, capitalizing on the moment to plaster battleground states with ads and to hunt for new donors nationwide.

The lopsided spending — $12.2 million to $611,228 on Meta’s platforms, according to company records — was hardly an outlier. Ever since Ms. Harris entered the race, her campaign has overwhelmed the Trump operation with an avalanche of digital advertising, outspending his by tens of millions of dollars and setting off alarm among some Republicans.

Four years ago Mr. Trump, then holding the White House, drastically outspent Democrats online early in the election cycle in hopes of gaining an advantage. Now Mr. Trump, facing a cash shortfall, is making a very different bet that emphasizes the unique appeal of his online brand, the durability of a donor list built over nearly a decade and his belief in the power of television.

The difference was especially stark on screens across the most contested battlegrounds in the week surrounding the debate. In Pennsylvania, Ms. Harris spent $1.3 million on Meta’s platforms, compared with $22,465 by Mr. Trump. In Michigan, she laid out $1.5 million, while he spent only $34,790.

“We just can’t afford to abandon a platform to Democrats,” warned Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and the executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation, which presses conservatives to embrace technology.

Mr. Trump’s campaign has spent far more heavily on Google, especially on YouTube ads that can closely resemble traditional television. (Google owns YouTube.) But even on Google, a New York Times analysis of advertising records in the seven top battleground states shows that Ms. Harris’s political committees have doubled Mr. Trump’s spending, $25.7 million to $12.8 million, since she joined the race.

Mr. Trump has courted digital-first audiences in other ways, stopping by a bitcoin bar in New York this week; talking with YouTube stars, streamers and podcasters; joining TikTok; and even creating his own social platform, Truth Social. But his comparatively light paid digital presence could mean he fails to reach potential supporters.

Social media has become an important theater of combat for political campaigns, both as a source of grass-roots fund-raising and as a place to draw younger and undecided voters who do not rely on television for their news. And in a close election, being able to motivate and turn out less engaged but persuadable voters online could make the difference. The digital spending gap is fueling some Democratic optimism about November, even as polling shows an ultracompetitive race.

“It’s a massive strategic advantage,” Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital strategist, said of Ms. Harris’s spending. “And the Trump campaign just seems to be asleep at the wheel.”

“Harris is running a more modern campaign,” he added.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said it did not need to spend as much because voters voluntarily consume content about the former president. “The Harris campaign must spend an enormous amount on digital advertising, and we don’t because our campaign’s greatest asset is President Donald J. Trump,” she said. “Millions of people want to organically watch and engage with President Trump — you can’t put a dollar value on that.”

Mr. Trump is also being outspent on television — but by smaller margins. Part of that spending emphasis reflects Mr. Trump’s own worldview. Mr. Trump, who starred in the network television show “The Apprentice,” has said privately that he thinks digital spending is a waste and has urged his campaign to spend more on TV, according to a person who has heard him make such remarks and insisted on anonymity to discuss his private comments.

Mr. Trump is benefiting from online spending by some Republican super PACs, but it is hardly enough to match that of Ms. Harris.

Part of the reason for Ms. Harris’s advertising edge is that she simply has more cash: She doubled Mr. Trump’s fund-raising haul in July and August. But the digital disparity also reflects the structure and priorities of each campaign. One of Ms. Harris’s deputy campaign managers is a former top digital strategist, while the Trump campaign does not have a digital expert in its top ranks.

Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s co-campaign managers, said his team had plenty of expertise.

“The collective experience in message delivery in the Trump for President campaign exceeds over 100 years,” he said. “And it also includes the timing of the onset of the internet as to where it is today. We’ve been part of that growth the entire time.”

Mr. Trump has not yet advertised on Snap, where Ms. Harris’s campaign has spent $3.2 million since she became a candidate, company records show. There is one platform where Mr. Trump is spending and Ms. Harris is not: X, the Elon Musk-owned site, though the former president’s sum is relatively paltry, a little more than $100,000 since the vice president entered the race.

Spending the most money is hardly a sure bet in presidential politics. Elections are often decided by broader societal forces or world events. Mr. Trump himself won in 2016 when he was significantly outspent. But the last two presidential races have been so close — determined by tens of thousands of votes — that every little edge is potentially decisive.

Still, the overall partisan gap in online spending is especially striking because Mr. Trump so heavily prioritized online spending in 2020. And some of his advisers credited a Facebook-centered strategy for helping him win in 2016.

Now, a Trump operation that once boasted of running tens of thousands of ads to determine what worked most effectively is putting out hundreds of ads instead.

The two main Trump committees that have run Google advertising since Ms. Harris entered the race have run roughly 500 different ads as of this week, compared with about 6,700 by the Harris team, Google records show. Over the same time period in 2020, Mr. Trump’s two main advertising committees ran more than 10,300 ads.

The overall breakdown of Google ad spending, which includes fund-raising ads in noncompetitive states, is $69.7 million for Ms. Harris and $18.7 million for Mr. Trump as of this week, records show.

The ads that Mr. Trump is running on Facebook reveal some tactical decisions. In the last month, his campaign has spent more on ads featuring the page of Alina Habba, one of his telegenic lawyers and advisers, than on those for Senator JD Vance of Ohio, his running mate. The Habba ads are meant to encourage small donors to contribute.

“Do we not have the best-looking team in the world?” Ms. Habba asks in one ad, as she walks around the campaign’s office. “Yeah, we do.”

One advantage of digital ads is that they can be precisely tailored to reach specific demographics.

The Trump campaign, for instance, is running ads on Google targeting women in urban centers of battleground states about his promise to make in vitro fertilization treatments free. The ads are pink with the words, in all capital letters: “Do you want more babies? Trump does.”

For her part, Ms. Harris is running an ad in the area around Dearborn, Mich., which has a large population of Arab and Muslim Americans, featuring her efforts “to end the suffering in Gaza.”

Before President Biden dropped out, he had also built an advantage over Mr. Trump in digital spending. But Ms. Harris’s rise generated a wave of Democratic excitement and donations that have allowed her to press the advantage.

“It really became stark once Harris jumped into the race,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who is researching social media and the 2024 race.

Ms. Harris, she said, outspent Mr. Trump by more than 10 to 1 on Meta from July to August.

“Biden was outspending Trump,” she said. “But it was not as dramatic.”

Michael Duncan, a Republican digital strategist, said that Mr. Trump’s pullback from Facebook was understandable.

“Donald Trump has been running for president for nine years, and nobody in the history of politics has spent more money on Facebook trying to find donors,” he explained, adding that the platform had become less efficient for Republicans in general.

Mr. Duncan said that the Trump campaign’s imperative was now to run negative ads defining Ms. Harris, and that Facebook and Instagram were generally weaker platforms for that purpose. “It’s harder to persuade people with video on Facebook because they can scroll past it,” he said.

Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager for Ms. Harris with a background in digital strategy, said that her campaign intended to spread its message in every way possible.

“In an election that will be incredibly close, we think it’s a good bet to invest in our voters and reach them everywhere that will inform how they vote this fall — whether it’s online or in their communities,” he wrote in a statement.

The Democratic digital spending advantage is a big change from previous cycles, when Mr. Trump seemed poised to put Republicans more in control of the online ecosystem.

“In 2016, the Trump campaign ran a much more sophisticated digital operation than Democrats,” said Tara McGowan, who served as the digital director of Priorities USA, then the party’s main super PAC. “So Democrats worked really, really, really hard to ensure that wouldn’t happen again.”

Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.