Harris Spends Nearly $30 Million on Digital Ads in First Week of Campaign, Swamping Trump

The spending was made across Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Montinique Monroe/Getty Images
Vice President Harris speaks at the American Federation of Teachers' 88th National Convention on July 25, 2024, at Houston. Montinique Monroe/Getty Images

Vice President Harris’s campaign is spending money on digital advertising like no campaign in history, according to new ad spending numbers posted by Silicon Valley titans. Ms. Harris spent 20 times more than President Trump did during the last full week of July. 

According to numbers posted by the Meta Ad Library Report, which covers ad spending on Facebook and Instagram, as well as spending reported by the Google Ads Transparency Center, which tracks spending across Google and YouTube, the Harris campaign spent $28.6 million during her first week on the campaign trail, compared to Trump’s less than $1.5 million. The amount is 20 times what her Republican opponent spent last week. 

According to the Google Ads Transparency Center, which provides daily ad spending data, the largest amount of money the Biden campaign spent on a single day this year was on June 27 — the day of the disastrous presidential debate with Trump that would later help force President Biden from the race. On the day of the debate, the Biden Victory Fund — now known as the Harris Victory Fund — spent just less than $700,000. 

The biggest day of spending for Ms. Harris since the start of her campaign was on June 22, the day after Mr. Biden dropped his re-election bid. On that day, the vice president’s campaign spent nearly $5 million on digital ads to help cement her place as the dominant front-runner for the Democratic nomination. The daily ad spends have since slowed, with the vice president spending $1.26 million on Monday. 

Ms. Harris’s campaign has enjoyed an historic surge of donations since she launched her bid, raking in more than $200 million since the president announced he would not run for re-election. In polling, Ms. Harris has pulled into a statistical tie with Trump, who was handily beating Mr. Biden up until the moment the president left the race. 

Ms. Harris has done a few campaign events since announcing her candidacy, though they were all on the schedule before she officially began running for president. In Wisconsin just two days after she launched her bid, she appeared alongside Governor Evers and Senator Baldwin to stake out her claim in the election. She said she would not allow Trump to take America “back” to the past. 

Since then, she has been vetting potential running mates for the 2024 election. That search had included a number of governors, including Governors Pritzker, Cooper, Walz, and Beshear. Mr. Cooper told the Harris campaign on Monday that he would withdraw from the vetting process in order to stay committed to his day job. 

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Harris campaign was planning a tour through “swing states” that will decide the 2024 election. It is to be headlined by Ms. Harris and her yet-unnamed running mate. The list of states is not reported, though they will likely include some combination of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.


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