A New Way to Track Last-Minute Spending

Last-minute spending is pouring into races around the country, giving managers and consultants something else to worry about as they prepare for the final few weeks of the cycle.

Whether its a national committee’s IE dropping a few million on TV or a House rival putting a few thousand into digital GOTV ads, campaigns need to be able to track spending in real time. Or at least that’s the pitch from Tyler Arnold, a digital entrepreneur who founded Circa Victor.

The company, which launched roughly a year ago, has been courting business from committees, Super PACs, media organizations and campaigns. For the latter, it’s offerings including one-off reports on who is spending in a district. 

For committees, Super PACs and media organizations, Circa Victor is pitching Advocacy Intelligence, which is real-time campaign finance data, run through its proprietary algorithms, tracking as many as 50 races at a time.

The company, which says it has a dozen proprietary algorithms, bills itself as “the most comprehensive campaign finance database in existence.”

“We actually pull our insights from the raw filings and then we do a number of different things to the data,” said Arnold. “We’re attaching each dollar spent back to a candidate, race and a committee, and doing the same thing with donor information.”

Circa Victor is also looking out for duplicate and amended filings, and has the ability to make those pesky Senate FEC reports machine readable in as little as 90 minutes.

“You can see exactly where all the money is going,” he said. “If a specific spend is in support or opposition to a candidate, what type of spend it is — whether it’s digital ads, TV or [polling].”

Some consultants and managers might be a underwhelmed by the prospect of paying for a service that’s drawing data from what’s publicly available at the FEC. But Arnold notes the company provides an additional analysis that includes the more than a million data points it processes each week.

Moreover, he added, “one of the biggest benefits we give them is time.” As a result, campaigns can “make decisions quicker.”

The service is non-partisan, but if competition campaigns are using the service they get their reports and data delivered in the same moment.

Meanwhile, the service can also provide business intelligence for consultants. For instance, firms pitching a committee contract can see through one of the company’s reports what their competitors are billing for their services. “Circa can help you want to better understand the relationships between vendors and committees, to get a broader view of spending patterns,” Arnold said.