What Wesleyan Media Project does

Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) is a non-partisan academic research initiative housed within Wesleyan University's Quantitative Analysis Center, founded in 2010 as the successor to the disbanded Wisconsin Advertising Project. The organization provides real-time tracking and analysis of political advertising across all 210 U.S. media markets for broadcast television, plus digital advertising on Meta and Google platforms. Its core product is a longitudinal dataset of political ad airings that includes spending, sponsorship (candidate, party, outside group), issue mentions, and tone coding, made available to academic researchers through the Figshare platform at a nominal $20 per dataset fee. WMP also publishes issue spotlight reports covering eight policy areas, year-end summaries for each election cycle, and peer-reviewed research in The Forum journal.

The technology stack relies on a contractual data supply relationship with Vivvix/CMAG for broadcast television ad tracking, supplemented by weekly downloads from the Meta Ad Library and Google Transparency Report for digital ad analysis. WMP operates machine learning classifiers — random forest models trained on 3,671 human-coded digital ads — to classify ad goals (persuasion versus fundraising) with disclosed F1-scores of 85% and 97.5% respectively. The pipeline uses automatic speech recognition for video ad audio and OCR for image-only ads. In the 2025-2026 cycle, WMP introduced detection of AI-generated or AI-enhanced political ads, identifying at least $19.7 million in such spending. The Cross-platform Election Advertising Transparency Initiative (CREATIVE) Geo-Ad Spending web application, launched in October 2024, extends the analytical capability to interactive public use.

WMP is directed by three academic co-directors — Erika Franklin Fowler (Wesleyan), Michael M. Franz (Bowdoin College), and Travis N. Ridout (Washington State University) — and operates with a small staff of program management, post-doctoral fellows, and student researchers through the Delta Lab research collaborative. Revenue is composed primarily of foundation grants (Knight Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and institutional support from partner universities, with data sales representing a nominal administrative fee rather than meaningful commercial revenue. The organization's customer base includes academic researchers (primary), journalists and media organizations (The Hill, CBS News, Time, PBS Newshour, Marketplace are regular citation partners), and civic organizations seeking political advertising transparency.

Name

Wesleyan Media Project

Legal name

Wesleyan Media Project

Website

https://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu

Company type

Private

Founded year

2010

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

The Wesleyan Media Project is a non-partisan academic research initiative at Wesleyan University that tracks and analyzes political advertising across all 210 U.S. media markets for broadcast TV and digital platforms, serving academic researchers, journalists, and civic organizations with longitudinal datasets, issue reports, and transparency research.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Political Advertising Research

NAICS

Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910)

SIC

Services-Advertising (7310)

akta.pro primary industry

Audience Measurement & Media Research (Ratings, Attribution, Media Mix Insights) (MPAAALAM)

Keywords

• Political advertising tracking
• Election data analytics
• Campaign finance research
• Advertising transparency data
• Media research services

Headquarters

HQ city

Middletown

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Academic Data Sales: The organization sells access to political advertising datasets to academic researchers at $20 per dataset. Data includes Stata and SPSS files, video files of ads, and variable matrices. Due to contractual obligations with data provider Vivvix/CMAG, data can only be purchased by members of academic institutions for academic purposes.
2. Foundation Grants: The Wesleyan Media Project receives funding from organizations including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support research and tracking activities.
3. Institutional Support: Supported by Wesleyan University and partner institutions Bowdoin College and Washington State University for core operations and staffing.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

The Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) provides real-time, non-partisan tracking and analysis of political advertising across all 210 U.S. media markets. Its core offering is scholarly access to broadcast television and digital political advertising datasets sourced from Vivvix/CMAG and platform transparency reports, supplemented by issue spotlight reports, year-end summaries, and peer-reviewed research publications. The data is sold to academic researchers at $20 per dataset via the Figshare platform, with the goal of enabling longitudinal, comparative research on campaign advertising, election spending, and content analysis.

Product overview

The Wesleyan Media Project is a research organization offering a data access platform for political advertising intelligence. The core offering is the Political Ad Airings Data product, which provides scholarly access to Vivvix/CMAG broadcast television tracking data from 210 U.S. media markets. This is complemented by Issue Spotlight Reports tracking eight key political issues across federal races, and Year-End Summaries covering election cycles from 2010-2022. Additional products include Health Insurance TV Advertising Data (2013-2018) and Population Health Messaging in Political Ads datasets. The organization also produces peer-reviewed research publications and maintains the Delta Lab for computational analysis of political advertising. A newer initiative includes a Geo-Ad Spending web application for regional advertising analysis.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Delta Lab: Computational analysis of political advertising and media with student learning as a central focus, an interdisciplinary research collaborative.

Products and services

• Political Ad Airings Data Scholarly access to Vivvix/CMAG tracking data covering all broadcast television political advertising from 210 U.S. media markets. Includes Stata and SPSS files, with each row representing a unique airing, plus video files (.wmv or .mp4) for each ad. Available to academic researchers for $20 per dataset.
• Issue Spotlight Reports Regularly updated reports tracking the percentage of broadcast ads mentioning eight key political issues: abortion, energy/environment, guns, health care, housing, immigration, inflation, and public safety. Covers federal races by state and presidential races by media market.
• Year-End Summaries Annual summary reports providing overviews of campaign advertising for each election cycle, covering 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections.
• Television and Digital Advertising Research Publications Peer-reviewed research published in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, examining political advertising trends, interest group influence, and dark money in elections.
• Health Insurance TV Advertising Data Dataset covering health insurance television advertising from 2013-2018, available for scholarly research with appropriate data use agreements.
• Population Health Messaging in Political Ads Dataset analyzing population health messaging in political advertising from 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 election cycles, used in academic research publications.
• Geo-Ad Spending Web Application Interactive web application for viewing regional ad spending across platforms, developed as part of the Cross-platform Election Advertising Transparency Initiative (CREATIVE) with support from Wesleyan University's Quantitative Analysis Center.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 4.5 billion in TV/radio ad spending tracked in 2024 cycle
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

AI capability4 records

Feature3 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered core and major.

• OpenSecretscoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024The Wesleyan Media Project partners with OpenSecrets to provide added information on outside group disclosure and candidate status. This partnership enables classification of groups by their tax and regulatory classifications (Super PACs, traditional PACs, non-profit 501c4s) and donor disclosure categories.
• Vivvix/CMAGcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2023Vivvix/CMAG (formerly Kantar Media/CMAG) is the primary data provider for the Wesleyan Media Project. WMP provides scholarly access to Vivvix/CMAG tracking data and video files covering all broadcast television political advertising from 210 U.S. media markets. This is a contractual relationship that restricts data access to academic institutions only.
• Brennan Center for JusticemajorStrategic or Co-development PartnerJoint report with the Brennan Center and OpenSecrets analyzing online political ad spending in the 2024 election cycle on Google and Meta platforms. The report revealed $619 million in political ads with nearly half from spenders that may hide donor information.
• Delta LabmajorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDelta Lab is Wesleyan's interdisciplinary research collaborative focusing on computationally-driven and innovative analyses of media messaging. Students in Delta Lab contribute to WMP's digital advertising tracking and coding, providing machine learning and coding support.
• Wesleyan UniversitycoreOthersWMP is housed in Wesleyan's Quantitative Analysis Center, part of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. Wesleyan University provides core institutional support and staffing.
• Partner UniversitiesmajorOthersPartner institutions include Bowdoin College (Michael M. Franz, Professor of Government) and Washington State University (Travis N. Ridout, Professor of Political Science). These institutions contribute co-directors and research support.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Broad incumbents

• Federal Election Commission (FEC): The FEC is the U.S. federal regulatory agency overseeing campaign finance. While a government body rather than a research project, it provides official campaign finance disclosure data that complements WMP's ad-spending tracking.

Direct peers

• Sunlight Foundation: Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan nonprofit promoting government transparency through open data, with overlapping focus on campaign finance and lobbying disclosure. Comparable non-profit civic-tech mission and political transparency use case.
• Brennan Center for Justice: Brennan Center is a non-partisan law and policy institute that analyzes campaign finance, dark money, and election integrity. WMP has co-published reports with Brennan Center on online political ad spending and dark-money disclosure.
• OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) tracks U.S. political spending and is an explicit strategic partner of WMP for outside group disclosure classification. Both are non-partisan transparency organizations serving journalists and researchers with campaign finance data.
• AdImpact: AdImpact is a leading political ad tracking and media intelligence firm that monitors broadcast TV and digital political advertising across U.S. markets. As a commercial competitor in the same measurement space, it competes for journalist and campaign attention with WMP's coverage.

Emerging players

• FiveThirtyEight: FiveThirtyEight (now under ABC News) provides election analytics and political data journalism. While focused on polling and forecasting rather than ad measurement, it serves overlapping journalist and public audiences and frequently cites WMP data.
• Borrell Associates: Borrell Associates analyzes local advertising spending including political advertising at the market level. Their local-market ad spending data and forecasts serve overlapping journalist and research audiences with WMP.
• Transparency USA: Transparency USA aggregates state-level campaign finance and lobbying data from secretary of state offices. It operates in the same non-partisan civic transparency space with overlapping journalist and research user base.

Others

• MRC (Media Rating Council): MRC is the U.S. industry body that audits and accredits media measurement services including political ad tracking. It provides the verification framework within which WMP and competitors like Vivvix/CMAG operate.
• Vivvix (formerly Kantar Media/CMAG): Vivvix is WMP's primary upstream data provider supplying the broadcast TV political ad tracking data. While not a peer, it is a critical infrastructure partner — and as a commercial ad intelligence firm its outputs inform similar political ad measurement work.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xtwitter.com/wesmediaproject
• GitHubgithub.com/Wesleyan-Media-Project
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/wesleyan-university

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Wesleyan Media Project