During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, ads that didn’t explicitly mention Trump but endorsed his agenda and rhetoric would occasionally appear out of nowhere, produced by mysterious groups that no one seemed to know anything about. As campaign laws are currently structured, some of these groups, if they were set up the right way, didn’t need to disclose their backers. And while any TV advertising they might have booked would have been trackable (because TV ad inventory is finite, and there are companies, such as Kantar and iSpot.tv, that track national and local TV ad placements and estimated spending), comprehensive data about digital-media spending by any given group was and continues to be elusive.
Now, thanks to an OpenSecrets report by Robert Maguire titled “Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters,” we finally know the story behind some of the most inflammatory political ads released in 2016. OpenSecrets is a project of the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a D.C. non-profit, nonpartisan research group. Robert Mercer is, of course, the hedge fund billionaire most famous for funding alt-right website Breitbart News, backing Trump’s presidential campaign and bringing Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon into the inner circle of Trump’s campaign.
“Welcome to the Islamic States of America,” at the top of this post, was released just days before the 2016 presidential election. Others in a series of faux travel ads, such as “Book Your Trip to the Islamic State of France,” bottom, were also released in the run-up to the election. As Maguire writes,
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