This web app has been created as part of the Cross-platform Election Advertising Transparency Initiative (CREATIVE), and was inspired by Regional Ad Spending Web App.

CREATIVE is an academic research project that has the goal of providing the public with analysis tools for more transparency of political ads across online platforms. In particular, CREATIVE provides cross-platform integration and standardization of political ads collected from Google and Facebook. CREATIVE is a joint project of the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) and the privacy-tech-lab at Wesleyan University.

This web app visualizes the Facebook and Instagram ad data that CREATIVE has collected for the presidential candidates and their joint fundraising committee spending for the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. Users can select the year(s), candidate(s), and specific time period to observe the aggregated spending on ads in each state based on the selected criteria. Users can then screenshot the maps via Windows key + Shift + S on Windows or via Shift + Command + 4 on Mac. To zoom out, press Command and - for Mac or Ctrl - for Windows.

The spending is reported by week on Saturday. The timeline is labeled by weeks leading up to the election day to easily compare between the two election years as the dates vary by year. Data is currently only available up to October 12, 2024 for the 2024 data, and will be updated once new data is available.

Joseph Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, 2024 (-15 weeks) before Kamala Harris became the primary Democratic candidate. When "2024" is selected in the year dropdown, a marker appears on the timeline, signaling when Biden dropped out. This information is displayed when the user hovers over the marker. Since there is no delineation of when the ad spending switched from Biden to Harris, these two candidates have been grouped together and will be displayed as "Biden / Harris".

On behalf of CREATIVE, we hope you enjoy engaging with this web app!

Select election year(s) to observe

2020 2024

Select candidate(s) to observe

Select a year.

Biden, Joseph R. Jr. Biden, Joseph / Harris, Kamala Trump, Donald J.

Adjust the slider to display data for a particular time period.

To adjust the slider, move the left circle to change the date on the left and the right circle to change the date on the right.
After moving one of the circles, you can also click the arrow icons on each side of the slider to adjust the circle.
You can also drag the darker green section in between the circles to move the entire slider.

Note: The time scale of the data is of one week recorded on Saturday, and the timeline is labeled by weeks leading up to the election day.