“This is a modern campaign in 2024 and we’re not just stuck in the times of old, where 80 percent of the budget has to be on television,” said Quentin Fulks, Harris’s principal deputy campaign manager, in an interview with The New York Times.
In this initial reservation of ad time, the flush Harris campaign has set aside less than half of its budget for traditional television. By comparison, four years ago, the Biden campaign spent 80% of its initial ad buy reservation on traditional TV. As The Times correctly observed:
"Of course, the difference between digital and television is increasingly blurred as a growing number of Americans watch television programs through streaming platforms . . . all of which are part of the Harris digital reservation."
The Harris campaign said their strategy reflects the need to reach voters digitally "as traditional television audiences continue to fragment and shrink."
Harris's initial digital ad buy includes Connected TV, programmatic audio, and online video, tactics which we regularly discuss in this newsletter. We couldn't imagine a better datapoint for the strategies we cover here each week.