Source: Politics<\/p>\n
A former Biden campaign senior adviser and a Priorities USA executive director are joining forces to launch a digital advertising firm, one of the first such Democratic political consulting outfits to emerge after the 2020 election. <\/p>\n
Megan Clasen, who ran a $250 million digital ad program for Biden, and Patrick McHugh, who led Democrats\u2019 largest super PAC over the last two campaign cycles, are launching the digital ad firm Gambit Strategies,<\/u><\/a> they tell POLITICO. <\/p>\n Gambit will focus on digital persuasion, get-out-the-vote operations and issue advocacy. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019ve seen is a lot of TV firms saying \u2018We can do digital as well\u2019 or digital fundraising firms saying \u2018We can do digital persuasion and mobilization,\u2019\u201d Clasen said. \u201cThere aren\u2019t many firms saying we are digital mobilization, persuasion experts.\u201d <\/p>\n The focus comes as more Americans migrate to digital platforms, something McHugh said has been \u201csupercharged\u201d by the Covid pandemic. Even before that, political campaigns had increasingly shifted<\/u><\/a> resources toward digital spending, targeting platforms like Youtube, Reddit, Hulu, Google and Facebook. <\/p>\n The Biden campaign\u2019s digital ad investment exploded once he moved into the general election to square off against Donald Trump. <\/p>\n Clasen went from overseeing a staff of two to three people in the primary to heading up a 35-person team that would spend upward of $20 million a week.<\/p>\n As the campaign progressed, Clasen\u2019s team developed a strategy to work around Facebook\u2019s ad limitations, such as the social media site\u2019s rule that prevented new creative ads from running in the final days of the campaign. The cash-flush Biden team proactively developed hundreds of alternate ads that were ready to go even before they knew what the Trump campaign would fire at them. <\/p>\n The spending also steered resources to conservative sites to reach differing populations in battleground states with digital ads, taking over Fox News\u2019 website at key moments like after a general election debate, for example, or popping up in places like professional bull riding sites. <\/p>\n