Associated Press
President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Los Angeles 2028 organizers, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
- Trump's re-election campaign just bought YouTube's most prominent homepage ad space for the run-up to the election, according to Bloomberg.
- The campaign purchased ads on the coveted YouTube "masthead," ensuring its message will be seen by millions of the site's viewers, Bloomberg reported.
- Running ads on YouTube's homepage for multiple days could cost the campaign millions of dollars.
- Obama made a similar ad buy, running a YouTube homepage ad on Election Day during the 2012 race.
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President Donald Trump's re-election campaign just purchased ad space on YouTube's homepage for the time period leading up to Election Day, according to Bloomberg.
The coveted digital real estate, referred to as the "masthead," is seen by millions of viewers every day and could give the president massive exposure during a crucial time period. Running a masthead ad on YouTube could also cost the Trump campaign an estimated $1 million per day, according to an estimate from NPR.
Bloomberg's report did not specify how long the campaign had secured ad space for, but implied that the site would only be displaying Trump ads in the "immediate run up to the US presidential election and on Election Day."
In 2012, former president Barack Obama also turned to YouTube to get his message out, running masthead ads on election day, which Google said resulted in 400,000 people looking up polling places.
The focus on YouTube - which is owned by Google, itself a subsidiary of Alphabet - highlights how important digital advertising has become to digital campaigns. EMarketer estimates that digital political ad spending will cross $1 billion for the 2020 cycle, thanks to billionaires like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer injecting large amounts of money into the race.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story is developing.
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