In the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election and on Election Day, YouTube's homepage will reportedly be advertising only one candidate: Donald Trump.

The impeached president’s re-election campaign bought out YouTube's costly advertising space for early November, and the deal ensures Trump will be all anyone sees on Google's YouTube during the critical days when voters get ready to head to the polls on November 3, reports Bloomberg News:

While the bulk of digital ad spending typically focuses on targeting specific messages to certain audiences, the top spot on YouTube is more akin to a Super Bowl TV ad. About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they use YouTube, exceeding the reach of even Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

Ads on the YouTube masthead—as the video on the top of the homepage is known—generally run for an entire day. The exact duration of Trump’s ad buy and financial details were unclear, but estimates for the space range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million a day.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, lets advertisers target users based on a variety of factors, though it recently limited those options for political content. The Trump campaign bought the digital real estate nationwide, one of the people familiar with the deal said, both of whom asked not to be identified.

Read more at Bloomberg News, Business Insider, and CJR. [via MediaGazer]

Donald Trump’s re-election committee will take over YouTube’s homepage in early November in the immediate run up to Election Day through advertising space it has purchased from the Google streaming video website.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/21/trump-campaign-buys-1m-a-d.html