After Google Announced New Political Ad Rules, Michael Bloomberg Spent An Estimated $1 Million


Ex–New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg began his campaign for president last week with the purchase of a decaf coffee and a slew of ads on Google searches for climate change, guns, and President Donald Trump’s tweets.
The Bloomberg campaign’s ad blitz debuted less than two weeks after Google said it would implement major restrictions for political ads in the 2020 campaign. These restrictions appear unlikely to hold the presidential campaigns back, as indicated by Bloomberg’s spending, which is running close to $1 million, according to an estimate via search analytics platform SEMrush.
“We are investing heavily in digital, an area where the Trump campaign has had a free run throughout most of the country and we are going to change that,” Bloomberg campaign spokesperson Marc La Vorgna told BuzzFeed News. La Vorgna did not comment on the $1 million estimate.
Bloomberg’s campaign has run ads across thousands of different search queries, according to SEMrush, including ads that ran against search results for “Trump tweets,” “Fox News Trump,” “Trump approval rating,” “impeachment,” “climate crisis,” and “gun control.”
A Google spokesperson said that while the company’s new policies don’t go into effect until January, Bloomberg’s ads are already in compliance.
The former mayor of New York isn’t the only candidate advertising on Google. The Trump campaign is also an active advertiser on the platform. Campaigns sending traffic to donaldjtrump.com spent more than $3 million over the past month, according to SEMrush estimates (which are imprecise). Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, despite calling for Google’s breakup, is also an advertiser on the search giant, although not a big one; her campaign has spent in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 for ads on search terms like “Elizabeth Warren” and “Nevertheless she persisted T-shirt.”
For Google advertisers, context — what people are typing in the search bar — is much more important than online behavior. If someone searches “where to buy a Kia Optima,” for instance, that’s a more significant indicator that they want to buy a Kia Optima than if a third-party data broker found they were making $70,000 a year and had visited a car website within the past month. That’s just as true of politics as it is the automotive industry.
“The restrictions make it much harder to target based on behavior and psychographics,” Aaron Levy, a group director at Tinuiti, a digital marketing firm, told BuzzFeed News. “But they don’t restrict what you can do on a normal basis.”
Levy wouldn’t go as far as to label Google’s political restrictions as meaningless. But the core of the company’s allure to political campaigns remains.
In November, Google and Twitter tightened their rules around political advertising, setting Facebook apart for now. But a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News last month, “Nothing is off the table.”

Ex–New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg began his campaign for president last week with the purchase of a decaf coffee and a slew of ads on Google searches for climate change, guns, and President Donald Trump’s tweets. The Bloomberg campaign’s ad blitz debuted less than two weeks after Google said…
Recent Posts
- The Oppo Find N5 has made me even more excited for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge – here’s why
- Apple Intelligence is coming to the Vision Pro
- Security flaw in popular stalkerware apps is exposing phone data of millions
- Anker’s 58-liter solar fridge is a noisy power-monster
- Salt Typhoon hackers used this clever technique to attack US networks
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010