Joe Biden’s Digital Ads Are Disappearing. Not a Good Sign, Strategists Say.

“It is not a good sign for his campaign,” said Marne Pike, the chief executive of a Democratic digital strategy firm not affiliated with any 2020 candidate. “I would have a very hard time imagining no one was searching for Joe Biden and clicking on the ads.”

It was a similar story on Facebook. There, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., has been the top spender, outpacing Mr. Biden in the last 30 days by a ratio of about 12 to 1.

Mr. Biden is being outspent by candidates who, like him, are household names with big campaign budgets (like Mr. Sanders, by more than 7 to 1 in the last 30 days), and also by lesser-known figures (the former housing secretary Julián Castro, who has struggled to raise money, by more than 2 to 1).

As Mr. Biden has withdrawn from Facebook and Google, he has bought up more than $700,000 in television ads in recent weeks in Iowa. Despite those ads, Ms. Warren recently edged ahead of him in the closely monitored Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers.

Mr. Ducklo, the Biden spokesman, said small contributions “have been essential to getting our campaign message in front of voters: funding our television ads in Iowa and rapidly expanding the field operations in the early states that is knocking doors and making calls.”

Andrew Bleeker, president of the Democratic digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive, said that Mr. Biden’s more moderate position in the Democratic primary could make it harder to raise money online. “From a brand perspective, he can’t be that incendiary and that’s what’s rewarded online,” he said.

Keegan Goudiss, who served as Mr. Sanders’s director of digital advertising in 2016 but is unaligned in 2020, agreed: “Joe Biden hasn’t thrown the kind of red meat he needs to throw to do well online.”

Source: The New York Times

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