When the Trump campaign filed its latest campaign finance reports last weekend, the largest expense surprised a lot of reporters. Almost half of the money the campaign raised, $18 million, was spent on “digital and online advertising.” Specifically, it listed $8.4 million spent with Giles Parscale Inc., a web design firm whose portfolio included real estate firms, local businesses, a candidate running for Bexar County, Texas, tax collector — and the Trump family.
Before designing the Republican nominee’s campaign site, the small San Antonio vendor had previously worked for the Trumps designing Melania Trump’s site, as well as the site for Trump Winery. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, the firm had just 60 employees and was hired when Trump declared he would run for president.
As recently as June, the firm stated it would need to hire 100 employees to keep up with work on the campaign.
What does that digital work entail?
We know that the firm’s services include website design and website marketing. We also know that it has launched other sites like www.lyingcrookedhillary.com and published short video clips as well. But since candidates can lump consulting and digital ad placement on the same line, we don’t know how much was spent in either of these categories. Specifically, we don’t know how much actually went to design or to ad placement
WIth television ads, we can see the placements in Federal Communications Commission filings. We know when ads run, how many were purchased and how much they cost. But with digital ads, we don’t know very much at all. The Federal Election Commission has said the internet expenses only need to be reported if they are placed for a fee on another website. (We’ve previously written about how this internet blind spot could be troubling for disclosure.)
In terms of listing expenditures, some candidates itemize those digital ads while others hire an agency to place the ads for them so the expense appears as a single number paid to the agency creating and placing the ad.
Since internet advertisements are usually targeted to a specific demographic, only the people who are targeted by the ad will know it is out there. The only way to tell if campaigns are getting what they paid for in terms of this digital marketing is if those targeted people show up to the polls and vote.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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