NRA Boosted Online Ad Buys By 600% After Parkland

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Immediately after the horror of the February 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the National Rifle Association halted all of its digital advertising, including ads on YouTube, banner ads on websites, and Facebook ads.

Within four days, though, the NRA had returned in force, increasing its advertising aggressively on Facebook, and spending so widely and indiscriminately that its ads on YouTube showed up on videos for school-age kids.

According to Pathmatics, a company that scrapes data from online ads, the NRA spent more than six times as much on digital ads after the Parkland shooting than it did in the weeks before it.

The Hill reports:

Florida was the focus of a massive NRA effort on Facebook, jumping from the gun-rights group’s ninth to third-most targeted state in the aftermath of the tragedy, the review found, according to the Tribune. The NRA’s daily Facebook advertising dollars jumped from $4,400 to $34,000.

The online push was punctuated with fiery speeches blasting gun control efforts by NRA president and CEO Wayne LaPierre and spokeswoman Dana Loesch at an annual conservative gathering near Washington just weeks after the shooting.