Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has secured a 60-second advertising slot that will air nationally during this year’s Super Bowl telecast, an ad buy that will most likely cost at least $10 million and potentially one-up President Trump’s campaign, which has advertised during other recent sports events.
Bloomberg campaign officials confirmed the buy on Tuesday and said they would be paying “market rate,” though they would not specify the cost of the ad. But executives at Fox, which is broadcasting the game on Feb. 2, have said they were seeking “north of $5 million” per 30-second ad.
The Bloomberg campaign said its Super Bowl ad would be a new spot that would directly criticize Mr. Trump, rather than a biographical spot that would highlight Mr. Bloomberg’s career.
“The biggest point is getting under Trump’s skin,” said Michael Frazier, a spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign, adding that the buy was also a flex of financial might. “We have the means to raise a national campaign unlike any other candidate,” he said.
Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign has continued to set records for political ad spending by a presidential candidate, having already dropped nearly $170 million on television and digital advertising, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire media owner and former mayor of New York, is funding his campaign with his own money and is not soliciting donations.
More than any other candidate for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Bloomberg has made targeting Mr. Trump a core element of his ad strategy. Before he announced his candidacy, he pledged to spend $100 million on ads criticizing the president. And since he launched his bid, his campaign has unloaded a barrage of Facebook attack ads in general-election swing states, seeking to erode support for Mr. Trump by highlighting what Mr. Bloomberg calls broken promises on infrastructure, health care and dysfunction in Washington.
But the Super Bowl ad is a show of financial force rarely seen in presidential politics. Though some campaigns have made local advertising buys during past Super Bowls, a national buy has often been out of reach, given the expense. It is also usually viewed as wasteful to pay to reach a 50-state audience rather than buying ads in the swing states where campaigns would prefer to target their message.
But Mr. Bloomberg is running an unconventional primary campaign, choosing to avoid the four states that vote first in February and instead focusing his efforts on Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states will vote.
“It’s actually smart for Bloomberg,” said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “Bloomberg is running a national campaign, and the most efficient way to reach a lot of people in a national campaign is buying an ad in a top-rated show. And as expensive as it is, it’s cheaper than buying the ads market by market.”