President Trump’s reelection campaign has purchased the advertising space on YouTube’s homepage for Election Day.
The campaign purchased the website’s masthead on Nov. 3 nationwide, a person familiar with the deal told Bloomberg. While the specifics of the ad buy were not disclosed, the cost of such advertising is estimated from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million a day.
“In the past, campaigns, PACS and political groups have run various types of ads leading up to Election Day,” an official for the company told Bloomberg. “All advertisers follow the same process and are welcome to purchase the masthead space as long as their ads comply with our policies.”
Former President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign also bought the masthead for Election Day before Mitt Romney had clinched the Republican nomination, Teddy Goff, Obama’s onetime digital director, told the publication.
“This gets to a structural problem inherent in having a contested primary against an incumbent,” he told Bloomberg.
In the wake of imposing new restrictions on campaigns’ capacity for demographic targeting last November, Google previously considered disallowing masthead ads from campaigns on Election Day and instead running nonpartisan get-out-the-vote ads, a person with knowledge of the deliberations told Bloomberg, but the company ultimately decided to leave the current practice in place.