Harris campaign announces largest single ad buy 'in the history of American politics'

Since she officially launched her campaign for the presidency less than a month ago, Vice President Kamala Harris has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, the campaign is spending big on a major ad spend in multiple swing states.

According to NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur, the Harris/Walz campaign has announced a whopping $370 million investment in campaign advertising between Labor Day and Election Day. $170 million of that will be for TV ads, and the other $200 million will be for digital advertising on digital platforms. The campaign called it "the largest digital reservation in the history of American politics,” with a goal to “reach voters where they are.”

The Hill reported on a memo from Harris/Walz deputy campaign managers Quentin Fulks and Rob Flaherty, which named the specific programs it selected for TV ads. The campaign will be running ads on sports programming like NFL, WNBA, NBA, MLB and NHL games, as well as during popular network primetime shows like Abbott Elementary, Golden Bachelorette, Survivor, Grey's Anatomy, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

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"The Harris-Walz campaign’s advertising strategy is designed to break through a fragmented media environment and reach the voters who will decide this election," Fulks and Flaherty said.

Over the final months of the campaign, Harris' team is also spending eight figures on national TV ads in addition to the ads reserved for media markets in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This comes after a previously announced $190 million ad spend in the latter part of August.

Former President Donald Trump is also spending big on advertising, though his campaign is focused more on national TV placements. Wisconsin Public Radio reported earlier this week that since mid-July, ads supporting Trump's candidacy have aired roughly 44,000 times on broadcast TV networks. Harris' footprint is slightly less, with 33,000 ads in support of her campaign. Harris is uniquely focused on Wisconsin, spending $2.3 million just in the Green Bay media market.

"At least in this early part of this part of the election, it looks like the Democrats think Wisconsin is too important to triage," Wesleyan Media Project co-founder Michael Franz said.

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The massive ad spend will also help Harris and Walz introduce themselves to voters who are just now starting to tune into the 2024 election. New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy told Axios earlier this week that a critical goal of campaign advertising for any candidate is to make sure they control how they are defined in order to best counter messaging from the opposition.

"It is imperative that you define yourselves before the other guys define you," Murphy said. "And do it ASAP, particularly if you have a wall of money."

Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race on July 21, donations to Harris have exploded, shattering multiple campaign fundraising records. According to the ActBlue campaign donation tracker, donations to Democratic candidates on the platform have exceeded $571 million. That number is likely to jump even higher following next week's Democratic National Convention, when Harris officially accepts her party's 2024 presidential nomination.

Democrats are likely banking on September being a huge fundraising month, as Harris and Trump will meet for their first debate eight days before Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York for his 34 felony convictions. It's likely that the Harris/Walz campaign will make significant transfers to the Democratic National Committee's national war chest in order to help down-ballot candidates running to keep Democratic Senate seats in deep-red states, like Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Montana).

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Click here to read the Hill's report, and click here to read reporting from Wisconsin Public Radio.