Biden ramps up ad spending with $15 million buy

Former Vice President Joe Biden is preparing to ramp up his ad spending in the coming weeks, taking advantage of a recent fundraising surge that has helped him nearly close the financial gap between himself and President Trump. 

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is poised to drop more than $15 million on paid media in the coming week alone, Biden’s campaign announced on Tuesday. The forthcoming ad buys are expected to exceed the $15 million that the campaign spent over the past five weeks. 

The campaign will also continue to air ads in a handful of critical battleground states, including Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but will seek to expand its reach within those states by placing buys in more media markets. The state buys come in tandem with new national ad buys on news and sports channels.

The campaign’s spending plans come as recent polls show Biden either leading Trump or within striking distance of him in several crucial states that the president carried in 2016.

Facing increasingly uncertain political prospects, Trump has also ramped up his advertising in recent weeks, though much of that spending has come in states typically considered Republican strongholds. For instance, in Georgia, a state Trump carried by 5 points in 2016, the president’s campaign has heavily outspent Biden on digital advertising.

The Biden campaign’s new spending plans suggest that the ad wars have begun in earnest. 

The former vice president has begun to close the once-daunting cash gap between his campaign and Trump’s. Aides announced earlier this month that the campaign and its affiliated groups had raised $141 million in June to the $131 million raised by the Trump campaign and its affiliated committees.

Over the past three months, Biden’s campaign has made a “$100 million dent” in Trump’s cash-on-hand advantage, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, said earlier this month. 

Biden’s campaign said on Tuesday that its newest round of ads will focus more on the former vice president’s character and experience than attacking Trump. The campaign is also preparing new Spanish-language ads to run in Florida and Arizona.