Harris marketing campaign plans $370 million advert marketing campaign in key battlegrounds this fall

Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris greets the crowd at a campaign rally at the United Auto Workers Local 900 on August 8, 2024 in Wayne, Michigan.

Andrew Harnik |

The Harris team announced Saturday that it is booking at least $370 million worth of television and online advertising in key conflict regions between Labor Day and the November election.

During the nine-week campaign leading up to Election Day, the Harris team is reserving $170 million for television advertising and $200 million for digital advertising on platforms such as Hulu, Roku, YouTube, Paramount, Spotify and Pandora.

Nearly a month after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, she is working to get in front of voters before former President Donald Trump does so first.

With Saturday's announcement, Harris' campaign team is trying to secure the first advertising spots in the run-up to the Republican presidential election campaign.

“By making early reservations, the Harris-Walz campaign secures inventory for high-viewing moments, such as major sporting events and other national programs, before they sell out,” Harris' deputy campaign managers Quentin Fulks and Rob Flaherty wrote in a campaign memo.

These prime-time spots included the season premieres of TV shows such as ABC's “Grey's Anatomy” and “Golden Bachelorette,” as well as live sports broadcasts of NFL, WNBA, NBA, NHL and MLB games, the campaign said.

“Prices increase the closer the air date gets, and there is also less supply to choose from. So if Trump buys later, he will spend more per ad buy and get worse ad placements, especially on high-viewership programs like live sports,” Fulks and Flaherty added.

The Trump campaign rejected the notion that it had to catch up with Harris and called her campaign's new advertising campaign a case of waste of money.

“Advertising in support of President Trump is actually seen by more people than [Harris] ads, which proves that her campaign is spending money recklessly and carelessly because they have no idea how to run a successful campaign,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNBC.

The Harris campaign's decision to spend an additional $30 million on digital ads reflects a growing push to go beyond the traditional television advertising model to reach voters in today's more fragmented media landscape.

Since Vice President Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid, her campaign has aired over $33 million in television and radio ads, according to tracking firm AdImpact. The Harris Victory Fund has spent over $43 million on Facebook and Google ads, more than any other fund to spend money in the presidential campaign so far.

“We believe we are on track to spend more on digital persuasion media than any other political organization ever has,” Fulks and Flaherty wrote in a campaign memo.

The Harris campaign is also running daytime ads on Fox News to reach a “more moderate audience,” including supporters of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who it believes can convince them to vote Democrat.

Harris's fall campaign will take place in the crucial last mile of the election campaign, when the party conventions of both parties are over and Democrats and Republicans are making their final attempts to appeal to voters in the swing states.

Compared to Biden's 2020 campaign, the Harris team says it is spending twice as much on television advertising in Pennsylvania, more than twice as much in Wisconsin, four times as much in Georgia and six times as much in Nevada.