Data is considered to be the new oil of the 21st century. Every field knows that it can yield rich returns by tapping into it.
Political campaigns in the United States are no exception.
Data-driven persuasion techniques like digital profiling and targeting were now being used systematically and at a large-scale in American political campaigns.
With a promise of turning data insights into political results, data-driven campaign already became a main battleground for candidates.
In fact, there is an entire sector built around the acquisition and use of personal data for elections.
This ecosystem of commercial companies that provides data-driven influence services to political campaigns has been referred to as the Influence Industry by Tactical Tech.
In spite of having the potential power to shape our societies' governance, the industry is opaque, and the companies remain largely unknown to citizens.
We use the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign as a case study to attempt to define a basic scope of the influence industry by looking into all the data-driven influence service spending.
As we follow the money, we also hope to uncover information about the companies that played an influencing role in Trump’s 2020 campaign.
According to the data released by Federal Election Commission, Trump 2020 presidential campaign committee spend $769,089,384 in total.
How much of that was spent in data-driven influence service? By looking into the "disbursement description" data, we were able to identify more than 800 transactions most relevant to it.
These transactions can be grouped into 3 spending cateogries.
Without doubt, we first found all transactions with the keyword "data". It defined the first spending category.
However, there were only 37 transactions with the keyword "data" and related to the influence industry.
Trump campaign's total spending on data service is only $1,168,220 which is a tiny part of the overall cost.
Inside data service spending, one company called HuMn Behavior received 4 transactions in total $180,000 for "Data Consulting".
The company is very noticeable and can be easily connected to the influence industry because it was founded by Matt Oczkowski, an alum of the controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica.
Does this tell us political candidates try to minimize the public record that shows direct spending on data service?
Campaigns can instead explore, often more opaque channels to spend on data service.
One filed they can go is consulting.
The Trump campaign spent a total of $9,152,462 on consulting services that might have involved the use of data.
These transactions were described by more opaque ways, like "Digital Consulting", "Strategy Consulting", and "Communications Consulting".
We were able to identify 356 transactions in this category and 47 different companies were involved.
Despite not specifying this in their transaction descriptions, many of the companies identified in the consulting spending category explicitly state that they work on data and political campaigns in their websites.
These are a few example of the consulting companies that worked for Trump's campaign and explicitly state that data is one of their major tools.
Deloitte, a well known professional services company received $947,424 from Trump's campaign also identified here. This shows how dynamic and complex the influence industry is.
Other companies identified here might also use data for political purposes despite they didn't explicitly state it in their websites.
Still, data and consulting spending categories only account for a very small proportion of Trump's overall campaign spedning.
Spending on digital advertising can also be tied to the influence industry. Many digital advertising companies specializing in using data for creating personalized ads that will reach to the right voter through a targeted channel.
The Trump campaign spent a whopping 493 million dollars on this category. These transactions excluded the ones that described as "media production service".
When it comes to digital advertising services, the Trump campaign worked very exclusively with only 4 companies.
Many companies in the influence industry have a strong partisan identity, and some companies might have strong ties to the candidate personally.
One company identified in this category can prove this.
American Made Media Consultants LLC received almost 500 million dollars from the Trump campaign for digital adverting related service. But one can find very little information about the company on the internet.
This company doesn't even have a website.
The New York Times reported Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board of the company.
Across the 3 influence spending categories, there are some companies identified in more than one category.
For example, American Made Media Consultants received $491,754,97 for digital adverting service and $790,178 for consulting service.
American Made Media Consultants were was identified twice in two categories.
Together, the three categories' spending made up the total spending of the Trump 2020 campaign on companies and services that can be considered to be part of the influence industry.
It is a total of $503,477,192 and account for about 65% of the overall campaign spending.
This amount is more than anything other spendings combined, such as travel, personal, and merchant, etc.
As we followed the money, we were able to identify 52 different companies who worked for the 2020 Trump campaign and who are considered to be part of the influence industry.
Each circle represents a company, and according to the main services provided, all companies are grouped into three categories by colors.
Keep scrolling to learn more about the companies.
