Facebook Charged Biden a Higher Price Than Trump for Campaign Ads
In swing states, Biden paid average ad rates of $34 compared with Trump’s average of $17 in July and August
By Jeremy B. Merrill
When President Donald Trump wanted to reach out to older Arizona voters in August with the message “The RADICAL Left has taken over Joe Biden and the Democratic Party,” with photos of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar, Facebook charged his campaign an estimated $14 for each 1,000 times the advertisement appeared in people’s feeds.
A few days later, Biden targeted that same demographic with a message of his own, that he had a plan to expand Medicare and cut drug prices. But Facebook charged him a very different price — an estimated $91 per 1,000 views of his ad, over six times more than Trump’s ad had cost.
That price difference wasn’t an anomaly. The Markup analyzed every known Trump and Biden ad purchased between July 1, 2020, and Oct. 13, 2020, and found that Facebook has charged the presidential nominees wildly varying prices for their ads, with Biden paying, on average, nearly $2.50 more per 1,000 impressions than Trump.
The difference was especially stark in advertisements aimed primarily at Facebook users…
