Paid Media

Ad Engine

Tells you which ad platforms will actually take your money, which verifications to start now, and how to split your digital budget — all based on who you are and what race you're running. It's a strategy playbook built into the app, not a connection to any ad account.

1. Open Paid Media → Ad Engine.
2. Under Who's Advertising, tap your committee type — candidate, PAC, party, ballot measure, 501(c)(4), or commercial. The Eligibility Board updates instantly: each platform shows ELIGIBLE, MODIFIED (allowed but with targeting stripped), or BLOCKED (like TikTok and LinkedIn for political ads).
3. Read The Verification Runway — these are the ID checks each platform requires before you can run a single ad. Start them today; some take weeks.
4. Under Budget Allocation, pick your race profile: County/municipal, Statewide, or Ballot measure.
5. Type your digital budget (optional). The recommended split turns into real dollar amounts per channel, summing exactly to your budget.
6. Enter your election date (YYYY-MM-DD) to see your dated deadlines — including Meta's T-7 creative cliff, when new political ads stop being approved.

• The allocation is a Day-1 starting point, not gospel. Recalibrate every two weeks on effective CPM.
• Upload every Meta ad you'll need through Election Day before the T-7 cliff — including the response ad you haven't written yet.
• This covers platform ad policy only — it is not legal or campaign-finance advice.

Distribution

Your publishing queue. Set up channels (like "Campaign Facebook") and line up your finished video clips against them, so you know what's going where. Queuing plans the post — it does not post live to social platforms yet; one-tap posting is the next step for this module.

Make some clips in Video Clips first — the queue pulls from your rendered clips.

1. Open Paid Media → Distribution.
2. Under Channels, type a channel name (e.g. "Campaign Facebook") and tap Add.
3. Tap a channel chip to select it — the highlighted one is where your next clip goes.
4. Under Your Clips, find the clip you want and tap Queue →.
5. Check the Queue column: each entry shows the clip, its destination channel, and its status.

• Name channels the way your team talks — "Campaign Facebook," "Candidate TikTok" — so the queue reads like a plan anyone can follow.
• A queued item is a draft, not a live post. Nothing goes public from this screen.

Ad Spy

Found on the Intelligence shelf.

Type any opponent, candidate, or committee name and see their actual political ads — creative, spend, reach, and targeting — pulled live from the Meta Ad Library (Facebook + Instagram) and Google's political ads transparency data (Search + YouTube).

1. Open Intelligence → Ad Spy.
2. Start typing a name — matches appear as you type, each showing how many ads are in the library. Tap one, or type the full name and hit Search.
3. Don't know who's running? Use Browse Every Candidate — filter by state and office (Senate, House, President), then tap any candidate to see their ads.
4. Check Currently-running ads only to filter out old creative.
5. Read the dashboard: total ads, how many are running now, first/last seen, estimated spend across platforms, month-by-month ad activity, and which platforms they favor.
6. Scroll the ad cards for each ad's text, spend range, impressions, and who it targets. Tap View the ad ↗ to see the real creative.
7. Tap Build a counter-plan with your strategist → to send the whole picture to your AI strategist for a response plan.

• Spend figures are ranges reported by the platforms — treat the total as a ceiling, not an exact number.
• Search the committee name too ("Smith for Senate") — ads are often filed under the committee, not the candidate.

TV & Radio Ad Spy

Found on the Intelligence shelf.

Shows you who's buying political airtime on any TV or radio station — straight from the FCC's public inspection files, which every campaign and PAC must file when they buy broadcast time. AI then reads the scanned order forms to pull out the dollar amount, flight dates, and spot count.

1. Open Intelligence → TV & Radio.
2. Search by what you actually know — a city ("El Paso"), a station ("KLAQ"), or a network ("ABC"). No call sign needed.
3. Tap a station from the list (tagged TV, FM, or AM).
4. See every advertiser with recent political filings at that station, grouped by name.
5. Tap Read the buy on any filing — AI reads the scanned form and shows the amount, number of spots, flight dates, who paid, and the order number.
6. Tap Open the filing ↗ to view the original PDF from the FCC.

• Different forms show different things: a disclosure names the buyer; the order form shows the money. Read both when they exist.
• AI-read numbers are only as good as the scan — for a number you'll act on, open the original filing and confirm.
• Sweep every major station in your media market, not just one — buys are filed station by station.

Ad Placement (on the roadmap)

Placing and managing ads directly on Meta, Google, and programmatic from your own accounts is planned but not built yet. The tile on the Paid Media shelf says so plainly. Until then: use the Ad Engine to build your plan, complete your platform verifications early, and place buys in each platform's own ads manager.