Rise Digital

Political tools for campaigns and firms of all sizes.

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Combining data-driven research, proprietary ads data, and industry-specific ad insight, we created Calibrate -- which is now helping our team of expert ad buyers launch Viewpoint – the first media buyer of its kind in politics. https://t.co/FgWNWfjrSM

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We're so excited to welcome Steven Gordon as our Head of Engineering!

Steven comes to us after a stint on the @KamalaHarris race and 9 years as a senior software engineer at @SlackHQ .

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Ascend just crossed 700 users. We're so glad to see such widespread adoption in the progressive political world and have a lot of cool things coming to make Ascend even better.

https://t.co/fF37hrhmu9

[Andy Barr @AndyBarr34]

I keep hearing people repeat this line that the Trump campaign was more focused on streaming over linear television and that's why they won.

And like...as someone in the digital buying business that's a convenient explanation...but it's not true.

On streaming television Harris outspent Trump $119M to $57M and the blue team outspent the red team $293M to $189M. (Team = all campaign, coordinated and IE spending on a race).

On linear television Harris outspent Trump $294M to $234M and the blue team outspent the red team $686M to $606M.

So to recap: Harris outspent Trump by 109% on streaming and 25% on linear. The blue team outspent the read team by 55% on streaming and 13% on linear.

(For both streaming and linear I'm defining the campaign window as 8/1 - 11/5 -- and streaming is modeled off ACR data so it's directionally correct but not exact. If you have issues with that take it up with Congress and make them require digital ads data follow the same rules as linear.)

In both cases the proportional Democratic advantage on streaming was roughly 4x what it was on linear and yet this idea that Trump was more invested in targeted streaming vs shotgun spray linear is pretty pervasive in the why Harris lost discourse.

Now I have very real questions/concerns about the Harris strategy.

First, I've talked to a number of other buyers who described totally unrealistic over-targeting from the Harris campaign (basically the media plan not at all matching what can realistically done with the ad tech) that likely resulted in lower reach than they should have gotten from the same budget with the same target group just because they didn't fully understand what they were doing.

Second, I've heard of (and sometimes observed in the data) pretty obvious errors from their contracted buyers that look like weren't ever corrected (though I will say there is always some degree of error when you're trying to spend a lot very quickly in a complicated way).

Third, the supposed "efficiencies" advocated by FF PAC and others around national buying and hilariously extensive ad testing seem to have always been more compelling academic arguments than they ever were real-world advantages.

BUT this idea that Trump won just because his team was more focused on household-level targeted streaming vs DMA-level targeted linear is kinda blatant bullshit. The idea in general seems to stem from a way too early election post mortem from the NYT that leaned on the Trump campaign's version of what happened rather than actual information.

We need to have real conversations about the correct media mix and all be a lot more educated/open-minded/realistic/etc on how digital and linear can mix together. But let's base those conversations around real information rather than vibes and self-interested spin.

Screenshots on linear and streaming buy data is below (for the campaigns and blue/red teams) all from https://t.co/M2qeNAr9I8

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We've got some tools perfect for teams rebuilding on the off year. Take a look at Postmaster Data to get a sense of your domain reputation, Website Analytics to see how your website is performing, and Google Search Console to understand what search terms are leading folks to your site >> https://t.co/JueydFcBta

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We've made some changes to our news section of Ascend so it's easier to sort, analyze, and understand: like that there was a 40% increase in news stories about Trump this week and a 33% decrease in news stories that mention both Trump and Biden. Check it out: https://t.co/lGXrI4OfcF

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We just added a Google Search Console integration on Ascend that we Google Search nerds think is pretty cool. You can see which search terms led users to your site and what how high up your site was when they searched for certain terms. Check it out on https://t.co/fF37hrhmu9

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Ascend is now an official partner of @NGPVAN giving all NGP users super easy (and free) access to our analytics suite for email, social, fundraising and domain health management tools.

https://t.co/NBtCKLovVP

[Andy Barr @AndyBarr34]

Super proud of @EllenLempres and @Rise_Suite for cleaning up in the campaign tech awards.

> Best Software as a Service Company
> Startup of the Year

The really exciting part is they're just getting started. Can't wait for Ellen and her team to roll out some of the new stuff they're working on.

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We've tracked presidential spending for weeks, and, in the final campaign week, Trump and Harris's spending converged, with Trump's campaign barely outspending Harris's campaign. That's a far cry from where we were in Week 1. Check it out on https://t.co/EWJuzhoF6F >>

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Trump and Harris spends are paralleling each other with some huge buys on CTV, linear, Meta, and Google. Biggest source of spending is linear, and Trump outspent Harris on CTV and linear this week. Take a look >> https://t.co/EWJuzhoF6F

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

See these returns and so much more with help from our Tally tool >> https://t.co/EWJuzhoF6F

[Sam Almy @sfalmy]

Maricopa (77k from Friday), Pima (7k), and Yavapi (16k) returns added to the tracker. GOP ballot advances increases to +99k. Statewide turnout now over 30%.

Total: 1.39 M
🔵: 482k 🔴: 581k ⚫: 322k

Turnout: 29.7%
🔵: 38.2% 🔴: 37.3% ⚫: 21%

Adv 🔴+99k Ballots |🔵+0.8% TO

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Looking at Week 3 spending, the Trump/Vance team is spending more than they ever have -- outspending the Harris/Walz team on linear by almost $5k. The Harris/Walz team still has a spending leg up on the Trump team but the margin is narrowing. Take a look: https://t.co/JueydFc3DC

[Uplift @UpliftTweets]

For all our new followers who want AZ early ballot data -- we have a whole data platform that allows you to track early ballots in every state plus ad competitive data, social listening, media monitoring and whole lot else.

Anyone can use it here > https://t.co/CqAfpq2FHb

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

The Trump and Harris teams' spending is as close as it's been, and the Trump team has outspent the Harris campaign on linear. Check the trends out with our new way of showing spending on our AdImpact sources >> https://t.co/fF37hrhmu9

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

We got asked to contribute to a recent conference on trends we're seeing in the presidential campaign. This data is now slightly out of date, but sharing with our followers here for anyone interested.

https://t.co/WrhSRSBkcV

[Rise Digital @Rise_Suite]

Big jump for the Trump campaign in linear spending -- in Week 6 Trump's campaign spent half what Harris/Walz spent. A week later, they spent roughly 15% less on linear than Harris/Walz. They're still trailing the Dems pretty handily everywhere else (via https://t.co/EWJuzhpcWd).