Facebook's reach was a financial boon for Donald Trump's last two presidential campaigns, but it could have diminishing returns in 2024, Politico reports.
Republicans say the Facebook landscape has changed and they're not getting the response to advertising that they once did, causing campaigns to spend less.
“We saw in the midterms how a lot of campaigns were shifting their money to streaming, because Facebook just was not giving them the return on value that they had seen in the past,” said one-time senior Republican digital staffer and former Facebook employee, Katie Harbath.
As Politico points out, Trump was suspended from Facebook after people say he used the platform to incite rioters on Jan. 6, 2021. Now that he's being reinstated, he'll likely see a very different platform from the one he left.
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From Politico: "For starters, Facebook placed notable restrictions on ad targeting for political clients at the beginning of last year. And in 2021, Apple turned off ad tracking on their phones for users by default. Those alterations represented a seismic shift for the advertising world. It also had profound impacts on political campaigns. Digital operatives from both parties say the changes have made it less valuable for campaigns to advertise on the social media behemoth."
One Trump adviser close to his campaign confirmed to Politico that the changes are having an effect.
“You’ve gone from an area where you’re able to be very certain about how your return on ad spend is taking effect, to a little bit more fuzzy,” said Mark Jablonowski, the president and chief technology officer of DSPolitical. “It’s not that it doesn’t work anymore, but it definitely has made it harder to prove its efficacy.”
The veteran GOP digital operative said the changes caused GOP candidates to struggle with raising money online.
“The playbook for fundraising on Facebook has changed and the Trump campaign, like any other candidate, is going to have to adapt to that. And no one has quite figured that out yet.”
Read the full report over at Politico.
“I’ll be curious to see if the Trump team runs into a similar situation,” she added.