Trump vs Biden: what $199M in Facebook ads actually teaches marketers

Executive overview

Trump and Biden spent a combined $199M on Facebook ads in the 2020 election. Analysing their landing pages, ad creatives, and targeting across six categories reveals clear differences in sophistication.

Trump wins on marketing fundamentals: custom landing pages, aggressive AB testing signals, specific repeated messages, and raw user-generated content. Biden's ads were better produced but less varied and lacked a unifying message.

The marketer's takeaway: repetition of a core message, matched landing pages, and audience-specific creative outperform production quality and spend alone.

Landing pages

• Biden: one page, single clear call to action (email capture), no distractions — clean but no variation tested
• Trump: multiple landing pages matched to different ads and demographics — correct approach for scale
• Trump buries the call to action at the bottom of every page; most important element should be above the fold
• Biden collects email; Trump collects phone numbers — different channel bets on how to drive turnout action

Ads against the other candidate

• Trump's anti-Biden ads: fast cuts, suspenseful audio, focus on one repeated weakness (stamina/mental fitness)
• Biden's counter-ads: text-heavy environment ad lacked a specific hook; stronger video ad used quick cuts, music, and data overlays targeting the Black community
• Biden wins this category — his stronger video ad created an emotional call to action; Trump's teleprompter angle felt thin

Targeting African-American voters

• Biden's ad: Samuel Jackson narrating voter suppression history — strong ending, but hook arrives too late; should lead with Jackson to stop the scroll
• Trump's ad: raw iPhone camera, one Black man speaking directly to camera about economic hope — unpolished but authentic
• Biden edges this category on emotional arc, but both ads would improve with earlier hooks and more creative variations tested

Targeting Latino voters

• Trump: Jorge Masvidal (UFC fighter) speaking directly to Latino men, mixing English and Spanish, challenging the assumption Democrats are owed the Latino vote — strong cadence and credibility
• Biden: short, stylised video with Latina women and Spanish words — aesthetically fine but thin on substance and specifics
• Trump wins this category; Masvidal's delivery and message plant a genuine question in the viewer's mind
• Both campaigns put call-to-action text only at the end of long videos — a CTA watermark throughout the whole video would outperform

Inspirational ads

• Biden: equality and respect framing — moderately inspiring, no single unifying word or theme
• Trump: strength framing — consistent single theme, emotionally coherent
• Obama had "hope" and "forward" — neither 2020 campaign anchored on a single memorable word, weakening recall
• The question to ask: what feeling do you want the audience to leave with?

Nice-guy ads

• Biden: backstory and empathy approach (train commuter, ordinary person) — connect-with-me framing; Obama voiceover is strong but restructuring to lead with the train story would improve retention
• Trump: results-based approach — stimulus numbers, sharp cuts, music building momentum, ending on "leadership and action"
• Trump wins this category; showing results is more persuasive than narrating character when the audience is already skeptical

Why Trump wins the overall marketing comparison

• Spent more and used custom landing pages matched to ad targeting
• Collected phone numbers for direct text messaging — a high-action, low-friction channel for turnout
• Repeated a small set of core messages consistently (Keep America Great, Sleepy Joe, Drain the Swamp, Fake News) — repetition drives recall
• Used more user-generated and raw content — lower production cost, higher authenticity signal
• Biden's ads were polished but lacked message repetition, landing page variation, and a single unifying theme