Mike Bloomberg Spent More than $1 Million on Instagram Memes to Promote his Presidential Campaign

As the bid for the Democratic nomination heats up stateside, so does the barrage of advertising that naturally accompanies it. As with any election, you see all the traditional styles of marketing, from paid media to tv, to radio, however, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has taken a different route. In a bid to capture a younger demographic, Bloomberg reportedly spent more than $1 million on ads with some of the biggest meme accounts on the internet.

Can Bloomberg  buy his way to success?

For these ads, Bloomberg hired Meme 2020, a company created by the people behind some of the most viral meme accounts online, including @f*#kjerry, @tank.sinatra, and @kalesalad.

According to influencer marketing agency MediaKix, an influencer with about 1 million followers typically charges $10,000 per post, while accounts such as @ f*#kjerry, an account that has in excess of 14 million followers, can charge upward of $50,000 per post.

While working with political parties can be extremely lucrative for these meme accounts turned media companies, it is also not without risk. The owners of these accounts know that there is a big chance that they could lose followers if those followers happen to disagree with the political content that they are posting, however, often times the monetary gain out ways the temporary backlash that their page might receive.

Given the risk of public outcry that these accounts have to take on, politicians typically will pay a premium price to get this sponsored message to that younger demographic, a premium price that the likes of Mike Bloomberg are more than happy to pay.

Taking into account the average cost per post, and another couple hundred thousand dollars in agency fees, Forbes estimates that the Bloomberg campaign paid in between $1 million and $1.5 million dollars.

The big debate isn’t if this was a waste of money, Bloomberg, a billionaire 62 times over can certainly afford it, but rather did Bloomberg get bang for his buck? From the outset, you’d probably say paying in excess of $1 million for a handful of Instagram posts isn’t the best use of his marketing budget, but when you see the amount of debate, and more importantly, press it created, the audience suddenly multiples significantly and you would have to say if eyeballs was the ultimate goal, then the million dollar spend was certainly worth it.

But what are some of the experts saying?
Well, according to Vickie Segar, the founder of Village Marketing; “It’s a very big missed opportunity for other candidates”, said Segar. “What Bloomberg did here was a non-traditional approach, where he was able to leverage a mass audience and generate a lot of press on top of that”

While these handful of influencers cashed in on this political campaign, many other influencers opted out of taking money in exchange for the use of their platform. But what does mean for the future of political advertising, and will we be seeing an onslaught of influencer marketing as the presidential race thickens? Only time will tell.