Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential nomination contender and biotech billionaire, has stopped spending on TV ads, it was reported on Wednesday.
According to his campaign and analysis from an ad-tracking firm obtained by NBC News, the candidate spent just $6,000 on TV ads last week compared with $200,000 in the first week of December.
Still, Ramaswamy’s campaign maintains it is still spending money on ads less than a month before the 15 January Iowa caucuses and the 23 January New Hampshire primary – just not on TV, which is the largest beneficiary of political advertising by medium with as much as $5.1bn estimated for the current US election cycle.
In a post on X, Ramaswamy said “presidential TV ad spending is idiotic, low-ROI [return on investment] & a trick that political consultants use to bamboozle candidates who suffer from low IQ”.
Tricia McLaughlin, the campaign’s press secretary, told the network that the campaign was “focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified – best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out”.
McLaughlin acknowledged that the strategy “isn’t what most campaigns look like” and it was “intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hypertargeted in our ad spending”.
Former president Donald Trump, who built his 2016 campaign using social media and text, reacted to his rival’s change of strategy on Truth Social, writing: “He will, I am sure, Endorse me. But Vivek is a good man, and is not done yet!”
Trump has treated the young political neophyte as something of standard bearer, despite being a trailing rival, and has lauded him as winner of Republican TV debates.
“Vivek WINS because he thinks I’m great,” Trump remarked after the most recent Republican nomination TV showdown in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, this month. The former president took a swipe at his closest polling rival, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, saying: “Birdbrain looked different & lost, but I give her second place.”
On X, Ramaswamy indicated that his campaign’s change in strategy was planned.
“We’re doing it differently. Spending $$ in a way that follows data … apparently a crazy idea in US politics. Big surprise coming Jan 15,” he said.
