Editor’s note: This post includes spending data analysis by Ad Age Datacenter Director of Data Management Kevin Brown, with web production by Corey Holmes. Scroll down to see the charts.
The campaign cycle is finally starting to break out of its summer coma.
When it comes to campaign messaging and advertising, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have been in a strange, sort of awkward in-between phase through July and early August. Though we previously reported that Team Trump has been spending heavily to secure advance bookings of TV time for campaign ads set to air from Labor Day through Election Day, the campaign was thrown into disarray in mid-July when Trump demoted campaign manager Brad Parscale and handed the job to Republican political operative Bill Stepien—leading to a temporary freeze on TV advertising (pre-Labor Day, at least) while strategy got rethought.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, seemed sometimes eerily quiet—not only because Biden has been hobbled by being unable to do traditional campaign events amidst the pandemic (in stark contrast to Trump, who has not hesitated to continue to command the bully pulpit that comes with his job), but because his campaign simply has not kept up with Trump in terms of booking advertising time.
Meanwhile, both campaigns had to sort out what to do about their parties’ massively downsized nominating conventions while transforming them into mostly virtual affairs.
But now Biden has announced a running mate, Kamala Harris, a move that has not only immediately re-energized Biden’s bid, but has prompted Trump to step up his attack mode (on Wednesday of last week, #nastywoman was a top trending hashtag on Twitter after Trump trotted out that favorite insult for Harris).