Hours after former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his presidential campaign was spending $10 million for 60 seconds of ad time during the Super Bowl, the Trump reelection campaign announced that it would be running a 60-second Super Bowl ad of its own at the same price.
“The biggest point is getting under Trump’s skin,” Bloomberg spokesman Michael Frazier told the New York Times. “The ad is part of Mike’s strategy of running a national campaign that focuses on states where the general election will be decided, parts of the country that are often overlooked.”
The Super Bowl ad is the latest move in an unorthodox, nationally oriented primary strategy that has seen the Bloomberg campaign spend almost $170 million on television and digital advertising since launching in early November, according to Advertising Analytics.
Bloomberg’s attempt to get “under Trump’s skin” appeared to gain traction after the Trump re-election campaign, which has raised a massive war chest over the last few months, announced plans to buy its own 60 seconds of ad time for Super Bowl Sunday.
According to Politico, the 60-second ad or pair of 30-second commercials — the campaign has yet to finalize its plans — will run in the early part of the game. The campaign also said it had been discussing the ad for months with Fox, which has the broadcast rights to the game.
“The president’s decision to stay aggressive and keep the campaign open after his first election gave us a huge head start on his reelection,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement on the purchase. “Now 300 days out we are throttling up. The president has built an awesome, high-performance, omnichannel machine and it’s time to give it some gas.”