As campaign advertising spending ramps up, we are getting a glimpse at how the Trump campaign and its allies are targeting young men. Young Men Research Initiative has done a deep dive into publicly available data from Google and Meta on campaign ad spend and demographic targeting, looking for online ads targeting young men. Trump’s campaign itself, as well as four Trump-supporting PACs (Duty to America, MAGA Inc., Securing America’s Greatness, and America PAC), are targeting young men with digital ads on Google (including Youtube), which allows advertisers to target by gender, age, and geography (but not race), and also allows outsiders to peek at their strategy. Duty to America is also targeting men on Meta (Facebook, Instagram), and Snap, although the others are not. All the ads are in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as a small amount in Nebraska. The total so far is relatively small by the scale of the campaign overall, at about $1.5 million spent so far, but we will keep an eye on how it changes in the coming weeks.
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Google ad spending:
MAGA Inc (Men 18-44): $862,300-$1,044,900
Duty to America (Men 18-34): $311,700-$391,700
America PAC (Men 18-34): $166,100-$211,700
Trump Campaign (Men 18-34): $9,300-$13,800
Securing American Greatness Inc (Men 18-44): $3400-4400
Each committee has a slightly different message to get young men to the polls. MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness are using more traditional attacks on Harris’s prosecutor record, with ads that focus on immigrants and danger to women; Duty to America and the Trump campaign itself are both talking about Zyns, the nicotine pouches wildly popular with young men; and America PAC is focused on a message that Trump is a “Badass” who needs their support. Trump’s ads also highlight his support from male influencers like Jake Paul. Duty to America also attacks the Democrats for trying to limit online gambling. So the committees are not only making sure that their ads are being seen by this demographic when they are on Youtube, but they’re reaching them with content specifically relevant to the issues and influencers they care about.
As of yet, no Dem-leaning committees–either Harris/Walz or any PACs–aligned with the Democratic candidate is running a single online ad targeted at this cohort, despite it being so widely discussed this election, and despite the Harris campaign spending $25.7 million in battleground states on Google ads compared to the Trump camp’s $12.8 million. This echoes what Priorities and ProgressNow found: “Our analysis found that Democrats’ spending advantage is overwhelmingly going to general market communications where we are likely talking to many of the same broad swath of voters over and over again. Furthermore, we determined that not nearly enough is being invested in programs that specifically target the voters we know we need to win with the messages we know they need to hear. Since the start of August, only 15% of Democratic digital persuasion and mobilization spend in battlegrounds was targeted toward voters of color. Less is specifically targeted to 18-34 year olds on platforms, including overlap with voters of color.” We remain hopeful that young adult targeted ads from the left will ramp up over the next month.
Whether Dems engage or not, Republicans are fighting for young men’s votes, not only with vibes, but with cash. There is no question that young men are historically less likely to vote than almost any other demographic, but the Trump campaign is betting they can use the powerful cultural influence they have with young men to get enough of them off the couch and to the voting booth to create a margin of victory. We’ll see.