WASHINGTON • Roy Blunt's Senate campaign is the first to use a relatively new Facebook advertising feature called “Canvas,” which directs users through their news feeds to a high-speed video and print message about Blunt and his Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Jason Kander.
The new feature, aimed at mobile users, was first employed by the campaigns of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. A Facebook spokesman said that Blunt, R-Mo., is the first Senate candidate to use it.
An ad appears in the news feed of potential Missouri voters and when users click it their screen turns immediately to what Facebook promotes as an “immersive experience that loads immediately.”
It’s a kind of one-stop digital persuasion shop that, in Blunt’s case, directs users eventually to Kanderwatch.com, a Blunt web site for attacks on Missouri's secretary of state. Facebook says Canvas also includes a “call-to-action” button, which politically can mean everything from raising money to prompting a call to a politician.
Facebook’s “Canvas” promotion says that “people can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic images and zoom in to view images in detail.” Facebook claims Canvas loads 10 times faster than a standard mobile app.
“The Facebook Canvas ad takes over your screen and is interactive, so it allows us to target a message to a particular constituency in an eye-catching and novel way, driving more people to KanderWatch.com,” Blunt spokeswoman Burson Snyder said.
The campaign buys the ads through the Alexandria, Va., based, Targeted Victory digital campaign firm that says it has raised more than $265 million for more than 130 political campaigns. Target bought the first online ads for Blunt in January, 2015, more than a year before he officially announced he was running for re-election.
Federal Election Commission records show that, through March of this year, Blunt’s campaign paid Targeted Victory more than $150,000 for digital advertising and Web development, and thousands more for consulting and other fees. Snyder said the cost is “only a few cents per voter.”
Kander’s campaign also advertises on Facebook, but does not use Canvas, spokeswoman Anne Feldman said.
In other Missouri Senate campaign news, the same group connected to Republican operative Karl Rove and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that has been running pro-Blunt TV ads announced this week it would buy $2.5 million of September air time on Missouri TV stations, another sign that national Republicans increasingly see Kander as a serious challenger to Blunt.
This time, the ads will be bought through the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC run by the same staff that also runs One Nation, a non-profit that has been running the pro-Blunt ads so far. The difference is that the Senate Leadership Fund is organized as a political committee, which can receive unlimited donations but must disclose the donors.
One Nation was established under the U.S. tax code as an educational non-profit, which means that 51 percent of its activity must be on social welfare issues. Its donors aren’t disclosed.
One Nation has already bought $2.2 million in ads praising Blunt on military-related issues, including $1.5 million that ran this month.
The announced Missouri buy is part of a $40 million Senate Leadership Fund plan to advertise in the Show Me State as well as New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada. All except Nevada have Republican senators facing re-election challenges. In Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is retiring, and Republicans view it as a potential pickup in a fight to retain control of Congress’s upper chamber.
Missouri Democrats said that the Senate Leadership Fund’s telegraphing of ad spending is an attempt to “bail out” Blunt, and “the latest signal that the Missouri Senate campaign has emerged as one of the highest profile races in the country.”
The Senate Leadership PAC’s latest filings showed it is raising big checks primarily from big energy companies, casinos and wealthy individuals. That includes $100,000 last month from energy industry and business magnate T. Boone Pickens, and the football Houston Texans Chairman and CEO Robert McNair, Sr.,according to FEC records.
Chuck Raasch • 202-298-6880
@craasch on Twitter
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