One Media Company is Carrying ICE’s Public Image Almost Entirely on its Shoulders with Drew Eldredge-Martin | Hello Merge Tag Ep. 48

“One media company is now carrying ICE’s public image almost entirely on its shoulders…”

After analyzing 12 billion views across 90,019 videos posted in December and January, Drew Eldredge‑Martin of Ground Truth AI found that Fox News accounts for 70% of ALL views on YouTube tied to positive narratives about ICE — without Fox, the pro‑ICE narrative would nearly collapse.

In this episode of Hello Merge Tag, Drew breaks down what his narrative analysis reveals about who’s shaping the conversation, what content is actually driving attention, and what it means for campaigns in 2026.

We covered:

🔹 Why Fox News is driving both positive and negative ICE content

🔹 What types of videos are rising to the top of YouTube

🔹 The growing role of AI‑generated content in narrative shaping

🔹 Who the heck Benjamin is — and why he’s outperforming CNN on this topic

🔹 What sentiment data leading into Election Day tells us about the big 2025 campaigns

🔹 Why campaign teams need to pay even more attention to user‑generated content

🔹 And why you shouldn’t be sleeping on YouTube

If you want to understand how digital narratives actually map to influence — and what that means for politics, brands, and public opinion — this episode is a must‑catch.

 

Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

 

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Quote, “One media company is now carrying ISIS public image almost entirely on its shoulders. After analyzing 12 billion views across over 90,000 videos posted in December and January, we found that Fox News now accounts for 70% of all views on YouTube tied to positive narratives about ICE. Without Fox News, narrative supporting ICE narrative uh would nearly without Fox News, narrative supporting ICE uh would nearly collapse.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Sure,
Josh Klemons: Um Drew Eldridge Martin posted this on LinkedIn. I of course had to learn more. Uh so I invite him on the pod. Andrew is the founder and CEO of Groundtruth AI, a research and intelligence firm focused on how digital narratives shape public opinion and perception. So Drew, I called you Andrew. Sorry, Drew. Uh, thanks so much for coming on the VOD. Uh, so let’s start with can you summarize a bit about what you and Groundtruth AI do just so we have the broader context of like where this study falls?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: absolutely. Thanks for having me. Um, what we do is we collect uh video from uh the internet and we watch it uh and we pull out from all of those videos narrative intelligence. So, literally narratives about people, about institutions, about issues.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um and then we organize that data and append uh metadata and we do our own analyses of them uh to deliver insight to allow people to track what’s going on in a given uh given area given topic and then we have ad tech integrations that allow people to actually do something about it. So, you know, in the context of um you know, a political campaign, uh if candidate A uh you know, uh wants to, you know, talk to voters who are receiving negative information about themselves, we can uh allow them to uh to reach audiences who are receiving those types of uh narratives.
Josh Klemons: So obviously when you say you watch 90,000 videos, you’re using an AI tool to do that to like build narratives.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: You’re you don’t have like a team of people watching 90,000 videos one
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: absolutely. Yeah, I we have 90,000 employees.
Josh Klemons: day,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Each of them watched one video.
Josh Klemons: right? Exactly.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Uh no, we we yeah,
Josh Klemons: Exactly.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: we use a multimodal AI to watch all of these videos uh to then pull out narrative intelligence from each of them.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: And it’s an important differentiation. These are not transcriptbased. um which is a really important uh differentiator between other more like legacy um media intelligence research that’s out there because so much of the content that is going viral particularly around the very biggest brands and people uh on platforms like YouTube for instance these days are actually generated by AI. Um, we did a study last fall looking at content that was talking about President Trump and found that uh more than 50% of the top 100 videos um by view count um that mentioned him on YouTube uh were actually generated by artificial intelligence. And so most of that video content, it doesn’t have a traditional voice over.
Josh Klemons: That’s
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It doesn’t have text on screen. And so a transcript analysis will totally miss what the video is about and not not not see it. Um so we of often are surprised by the uh types of things that our system is able to identify um that’s communicating let’s say about an issue. We did something on renewable energy uh last fall where uh there was a video uh that told a short story uh that was very positive about solar energy’s uh ability to help people uh let’s say have an air conditioner in really hot weather um uh when the power goes out uh they can support it themselves.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: But that wouldn’t have been caught uh in our in a study if people had just been looking at transcript because there was no voice over on that video.
Josh Klemons: Interesting. Um, okay. So, let’s talk about the particular study that like got my attention.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: Anyway, so you wrote without Fox News,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: sure.
Josh Klemons: narrative supporting ICE would nearly collapse. So,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: like let’s just walk through that finding and like yeah,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: what exactly does that mean in in that uh in that context?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So in the study um what we found was that overall um narrative sentiment narrative nar uh negative narratives about ICE were overwhelming. Uh 85% of all videos in the study contained those and 81% of all the views of those videos were contained a negative narrative um about ICE. When we looked at just the components of the study that had positive narratives about ICE, 70% of those videos were posted by Fox News. Um, that doesn’t even account for some other Fox News owned accounts um that had smaller smaller components, things like Fox Live and that that kind of thing.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So it’s really playing just a dominant role in the content production and and uh virality and driving of views um on the YouTube platform um uh for kind of that narrative infrastructure uh of like uh supporting ICE and its um uh its activities.
Josh Klemons: So 15% of the videos you watched were positive and of those 15% 70% were created by Fox. How did that compare to viewership? Like were they also getting 70% of the eyeballs or was it just about
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So, one of the things that is difficult if you’re looking at at um uh content from the
Josh Klemons: content?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: outside uh on the on the YouTube platform, if you’re not the owner of a channel is you don’t know the exact reach, right? The user reach.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: you are only able to look at aggregated numbers like the total number of views that a video has and uh so we’re able to see the number of views we’re also see able to see the number of videos and the to aggregate views that every creator is is uh posting on the platform and so um we can’t give you an exact reach number.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: What the metric we like to use um is something that we’ve we’ve built called unsurprisingly ratings points. Uh which may sound familiar to those of you who have looked at uh uh traditional like legacy
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: television uh uh media metrics. Gross ratings points is is an analogous um metric.
Josh Klemons: You refer to them as narratives ratings points.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It’s basically exactly nar right.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, narrative ratings points.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So ratings points is the metric. We apply them to narratives.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: We also apply them to individual creators, but it’s the same metric in either place, just a different subject that we’re that we’re applying them to. And so it’s a measure of reach and frequency um by looking at the total number
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: of views that a creator like Fox News or a overall narrative has driven about a specific subject. So the denominator is actually just the average number of views for a video in the study.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: That’s a relative metric within a given

Josh Klemons: And uh so and so I’ll kind of repeat the
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: study.
Josh Klemons: question in that context. Like 70% of the content that was created, are they getting 95% of the narrative ratings points or 50% like are some of the smaller of the 30% of creators that aren’t Fox News that are pro ICE, are they also finding an audience or they’re all being drowned by Fox and it’s really just Fox all the
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah. No, they’re they’re they’re utterly being drowned out by by Fox.
Josh Klemons: way. Okay. And Oh,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: go ahead.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: There there’s basically one creator that is driving the positive narratives that is getting any kind of reach on the on on
Josh Klemons: So,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: YouTube.
Josh Klemons: there are plenty of huge right-wing outlets out there, funded right-wing outlets.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Is Fox News more pro ICE than them or are they just they still control such a dominant part of the market share that they just are drown? I think that this is an interesting case of like, okay, ICE is obviously, you know, I wouldn’t call it an outlier, but it’s like an extreme piece of like the Trump administration.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like, why isn’t Newsmax or,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: you know, somebody else like also seeing movement here? Is it because they’re not as conservative on this issue or as awful on this issue? Or is it because Fox is just still so much bigger than them in the scheme of things?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It’s a really interesting question and I think gives me a few ideas for further analysis that we could do on this.
Josh Klemons: Love doing
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um I I want I want to I want to raise uh one other like
Josh Klemons: that.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: kind of surprising statistic um that I think may help us get at this get at this uh point. Um, Fox News was the fourth largest creator
Josh Klemons: H
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: driving negative narratives about ICE as well,
Josh Klemons: what?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right? So, this is what this is. It’s kind of a paradox.
Josh Klemons: So they’re just competing with themselves on like content at this
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It’s it’s it’s it’s surprising.
Josh Klemons: point.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: We dug into this because it was surprising to us as well. And what we found is that our system, our multimodal AI was seeing the visuals in the Fox coverage of Minneapolis and of other ICE um content, other ICE um engagements. And it was seen the clips, right, the body cam style footage, the vertical videos, the clips from on the ground in in these places of violence, of protest, of community opposition. And it was understanding that as negative communications. Now, at the same time,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: as you see these visuals on a Fox video, there is an editorial piece, right? There is a a transcript, right? the host on Fox is saying something and their editorial view is very supportive of ICE, right? Which is what we see in the positive narrative statistics that we were talking about. But the visual communication is what was being picked up by this pos by this negative ICE um statistic about Fox as well that anyone watching this cannot avoid seeing right the reality on the ground.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I think there is a way in which the content coming out of a place like Minneapolis during this time period is hijacking the Fox narrative distribution system, right? People on the ground are capturing reality. Those visuals are so viral, right, and so explosive that even Fox is sharing them with their traditional audiences, but also in their traditional clips that are then being put onto a platform like YouTube and are going so viral that they’re putting more up there, right? Um, so there’s a way in which reality is winning here.
Josh Klemons: even like they’re doing their best to editorialize it into positive yet what they’re showing is absolutely living within the confines of like negative attention that is obviously driving the country right now like um you know it’s not just YouTube like
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: That’s the interpretation of our system and I think it’s something that I agree with. Um, and if you look at the, you know, the as these clips across all these creators in our study,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: as these clips were driving up the views of these dominant negative narratives, a lot of them very visual.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um, right. As you’ve you’ve seen the footage.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, of
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Sure.
Josh Klemons: course.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um you saw President Trump’s approv uh disapproval ratings also begin to rise. Um and so I I think there’s a way in which uh this moment there’s a lot that we can learn from this moment about the ability of of reality to reach even audiences who are let’s say highly partisan one side or the other reality has a way of breaking through and I think this is a really good example of that And I think you know u individuals uh and organizations need to to take take stock of this uh moment because uh it was moving numbers uh you know at at a level that we have not seen um uh significantly um in uh in this administration.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Uh, really powerful. You wrote that the pro ICE narrative landscape is highly vulnerable because it depends so heavily on a single outlet, which I think makes a lot of sense. Do you think that’s a recurring problem for Republicans in general who seem to be living more and more in a like information bubble or is this an outlier even by like the right-wing bubble standards in your opinion?

Josh Klemons: Like can this be extrapolated to other issues that like if Fox News cease to exist tomorrow, does the bottom fall out of Republican support? um or they’ve created a big enough ecoformational ecosystem that they would like continue to live on beyond, you know, losing their flagship.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I I don’t want to speculate outside of this issue uh too aggressively.
Josh Klemons: Is that what you’re doing? No,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um you we’ve done we’ve we’ve done we’ve done a little bit of work
Josh Klemons: I’m just kidding. Okay, go ahead.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um uh looking at um uh some other you know big topics. Uh but uh there’s a lot more work that really needs to be done here. um you know uh on other issues uh for instance I think it’d be really interesting to look at uh health care look at immigration more broadly um this is a snapshot here right this is this is media intelligence about a period of about two months um during um a really um a really major media moment um in that case people were going to Fox absolutely I don’t think While I think it’s still like a very large outlet in the other like limited work that we’ve done uh on related topics, um uh it’s one big voice among many.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um I think this is a uh this was this was moment that Fox was uh uh really driving an outsized amount of impact overall.
Josh Klemons: I mean again the the context in which I’m asking the question obviously is like we all all of us watch as like the right-wing ecosystem media bubble whatever continues to expand and you’ve got all these massive voices But the idea that one that the dominant player is not just dominant but like dwarfing all the rest combined does change the impetus over like where should our you know if folks are going to boycott
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: advertisers like you know is is moving across all of the media as relevant as simply going after like the flagship and I you know obviously we’ve seen a lot of traction on that over the years of like not running ads on Fox News but like should we be validating Fox News? Should Mayor Pete be you know going on to Fox News regularly and giving them credence? And I I’m not saying I have an answer. I’m saying like based on what I’m hearing from you, like it seems like a question that folks should be asking whether you, me, or somebody else is asking it, you know, but like it seems like a relevant um question.

Josh Klemons: So um Oh,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah, absolutely.
Josh Klemons: go ahead.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: No, I I I very much agree that like um uh there are opportunities to reach
Josh Klemons: Um
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: audiences. I I I grew up in a really small town uh on a dirt road in Pennsylvania and um I you know grew up surrounded by a pretty conservative community um and was a you know uh was a was a was a Democrat growing up uh in a place where a lot of people didn’t see eye to eye with me um on a lot of political issues and like I I very much subscribe to um talking to people and meeting uh on some level on values and objectives of of of government and uh spending the time to
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Uh,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: persuade.
Josh Klemons: really interesting. So, you mentioned that um like the negative sentiment towards ICE largely is coming from like body cam style short form content which probably is coming from both sides, right?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like it’s both like people like protesters and you know watch folks watching ICE as well as ICE themselves seem to be creating their own content.

Josh Klemons: Um but as a whole like within that short form content like is there a nar is there like a thematic approach to like what kind of video is working like is it like oh violence if it bleeds it leads or is there something more to it? Is it like it is there a theme line through which we can say this is good content in the context of dealing with ICE?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Speaking just kind of within the the research that we did, I think there were like there were two types of content that absolutely were rising to the top. one was some type of either AI generated or non AI generated but staged humor. Um, for instance, the single most watched video that mentioned ICE during this two-month period depicted a man who was driving away after being pulled over by ICE. They attempt to pull him over again,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: but he drives away again laughing.
Josh Klemons: Is this the guy with a scooter or he was in a car?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: We’re No, he’s in a car,

Josh Klemons: Okay. Because the scooter video also was like huge numbers.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right? He’s like laughing.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: He’s just like not t Yeah, he’s like rolling down his window and then being like, “Oh, take it. See you later.” Right. It’s It’s very funny. It’s very like to me it looks very staged.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um but I can’t be sure. That had 33 million views,
Josh Klemons: Wow.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um and then um uh there were also like some uh like the there was a guy um in here. This is an interesting um kind of uh subplot to all of this. Uh if you look at uh all of the the creators, uh the third largest creator by Radiance Points was a creator named Benjamin. We don’t know who Benjamin is.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um larger than larger than CMM in terms
Josh Klemons: He was the third biggest creator on ICE content. What a world we live in, man.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: of reach and frequency talking about ICE during this period.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: His account doesn’t have any creator identity, no photo. The handle is, you know, a couple words and a number, right? It’s it’s it’s uh it looks almost uh like AI generated. The content is largely uh humorous. Um, but then it also seems to have some possibly real content. Like there’s there’s a mix of what looks like Gen AI, what looks like real content. Um, that is posting content about ICE. And some of it is like looks like real civilian footage, like the stuff that we were talking about, the body cam style or like just, you know, in a marketplace kind of watching what ICE is doing. And then other ones are really funny. Like there’s one video on there of ICE agents eating uh uh eating donuts after a donut truck like you know had an accident and their donuts all over the road. Like it’s very strange stuff. Um uh but yeah larger than CNN.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So humor and violence or the like like were the things that it bleeds it leads.
Josh Klemons: You violence.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I can tell you anecdotally from another study that I don’t have right in front of me right now, so I don’t want to quote any numbers, but uh um uh the the top creators talking about Donald Trump in the fourth quarter of last year were the late night hosts. Jimmy Kimmel top among among them um in terms of uh in terms of reach
Josh Klemons: Yeah. So,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: frequency.
Josh Klemons: I was going to ask because like we’re talking about raw vertical video, like you know, very like lowfi, but like Fox News is obviously also creating very high quality. Yeah. Not as far as content,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yes.
Josh Klemons: but like, you know, the look and the feel. Um,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but like talk to talk about the discrepancy between like late show hosts have very high production value and that’s cutting through, but then like short form video is cutting through like that lowfi video is cut.
Josh Klemons: Like I’m trying to figure out like for campaigns and folks who are trying to create content like should they be focused more on looking like Fox News, you know, during prime time or more like Fox News out in the street like holding a camera and, you know, running around after protests? Did you see a through line between which of these is actually creating like bigger attention?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I mean, I would just actually take a step back and say like this exact question is playing itself playing out right now in like the the the battle for attention for all audiences in the US and in the world, right?
Josh Klemons: I’m asking you to solve all content through the context of this study.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Netflix is about to buy Netflix is about to buy Warner Brothers to up its premium
Josh Klemons: Exactly.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: game while it tries to fend off like YouTube and Tik Tok who have like no cost of
Josh Klemons: Right.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: development for their content. Um,
Josh Klemons: Right.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: so at the end of the day, like my my take for campaigns is that it has to be all of the above.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: That there are audiences that are going to want a premium product and are going to engage more with that. There are also going to be audiences that you need to reach that are looking for shorter form that are looking for lower like maybe fresher maybe more relevant like to something that’s happened in the last 72 hours, right? Content from a campaign. And those are all addressable audiences that you have to cater to and reach with your message and then you know organize
Josh Klemons: Okay. Um, so you you mentioned this earlier in this conversation, but you also talked about this in the report. Uh, you link the surge in negative ice content to a measurable like drop in Trump well bump in Trump’s disapproval uh, rating, which feels huge,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but also like makes sense like this is a singular issue for him at the moment and he is failing to meet the moment and it is affecting his numbers. Do you think that if do you think if Fox News suddenly decided, you know what, this is wrong, we’re on the wrong side of this, all negative all the time.

Josh Klemons: Do you think Trump’s numbers would drop even further? Like, do you think that there is a direct correlation? Like, is Fox keeping Trump from falling even lower than here? It is.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: we we saw a correlation uh during the time period of the study. Um it is very hard to draw a causal link between uh these these types of numbers.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um but um you given the extreme reach like even when even even when we looked at just US-based creators um like there’s a geo tag um uh for creators that they can identify where they are based. Not everyone uses it and you don’t have to, but just people who self-identify as I’m based in the United States and I’m putting content onto YouTube. um uh you know the the uh reach was well over 300 million um in the middle of in the early middle of
Josh Klemons: Are
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um of January on a um uh on on this content uh just the the the content that was negative about ICE. Um so um is there more

Josh Klemons: you saying reach or imp like unique reach or there’s no way to measure that with
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: this is this is this is this is this is views which is the best proxy we have for reach right I’m sure there’s some
Josh Klemons: YouTube? Sure. Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: replication in there but that is a sign if the frequency if the
Josh Klemons: Because otherwise every American watched it, which is still like, you know,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: frequency was three yeah still talking about a 100
Josh Klemons: right? You’re still talking about 100 million people, right?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: million people that you’re reaching when you’re hitting those numbers um and uh that’s just a significant port like no matter how that’s targeted, right? However the algorithm is delivering it, you’re still reaching a significant portion of movable people, right? Um who who who appear to have uh to to have responded to this. I think there’s absolutely more um that can be moved in these in these numbers.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um but um you know uh it remains to be seen like you know What does the month of February look like?

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: We don’t we don’t know
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No, fair. Um,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: yet.
Josh Klemons: okay. So, a while back, uh, you released a different study you did about the NYC mayoral primary between Mdani and Cuomo.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, top line,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: share some of the things you learned from that race. I think it’s helpful to see how you approach this beyond just this one
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: study.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Absolutely. We re released a number of studies. I think we have the most recent one on our website. It’s probably the one that you that you saw. Um so we we did I think three different looks at the race. The first one was uh looking at the eight weeks leading up to the primary last summer. It was one of the very first public studies we released um using u using uh clarify AI. And um what we saw there was an incredible amount of reach uh for Mandani’s campaign um with their ability to drive particularly uh organic uh non-paid content um uh through their supporters through uh influencers who were engaged with the campaign in one way or another.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um they were just dwarfing the Cuomo campaign um on on the YouTube platform. And um their sentiment though u the sentiment of that content was
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um on the order of uh one and a half to two x more positive than negative. Right? They had a real like incredible reach,
Josh Klemons: I wrote down 71% negative.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: but they also had like 150% positive
Josh Klemons: Uh positive, right? Um,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: to 200% positive.
Josh Klemons: okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um I don’t I forget that the number of like significantly positive but it’s not you
Josh Klemons: Sure. Sure. Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: know like Hillary Clinton had a like what 60 to 70% chance of winning in 2016 uh according to the prognosticators and pollster.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um so so it wasn’t it was it was a bit divisive but uh he was really he really had a strong positive message that seemed to be breaking through broadly on on the platform. Um as we moved into the general election, we did two studies and both of them showed um while Mandani was still driving like incredible reach um greater division in those sentiment numbers.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: By the time the general election arose, um we were looking week by week. I don’t think we actually included this in the public study, but um we’ve got some we’ve got some numbers um that we were looking at week by week. Uh the final week was exactly 5050 the sentiment um amongst
Josh Klemons: Wow.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: all content mentioning um Mdani’s name. um which we thought was was was pretty interesting uh because that wasn’t the perception of his campaign online um in the conversation in the media around the around the campaign that he had some you know um you know progressive you know uh u you know positions and seemed to be like really good at communicating them uh was definitely part of the uh part of the conversation that there was a lot of push back from Cuomo or for from Siwa or other outside voices. Absolutely. But I don’t think people kind of caught on to to this um in the in the conversation around the race. Um so anyway, we we were we were really fascinated with that.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I I’m we’re we built this narrative clustering tool um that we’ve used in our more recent studies after the New York City mayor’s race last year. So,
Josh Klemons: H
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: we’re looking to go back and do a narrative clustering analysis and hope to release those numbers in the coming weeks, but we haven’t done it
Josh Klemons: interesting. And um that content like that negative content that did the positive content go down
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: yet.
Josh Klemons: or the negative content caught up to meet it or it’s hard to say without like having the stud in front of
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: you.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: it’s it’s it’s hard to be specific uh without like this additional analysis that we’re going to run. The the best analogy I have is that that first version that we were using through um through really the end of November of last year of of our technology um it it allows us to see the surface of the ocean. Um, this new clustering engine that we we were prototyping and starting to test in December of last year um allows us to see the ocean currents below the top of the ocean.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: And so it allows us to do things like talk about um in the ice study context, what types of content, what types of narratives were driving a surge, right? uh versus um you know maybe disappearing you know as a story changes um the es and flows of of those discussions.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No, interesting. I’m excited to see that tool uh in action. You you said you haven’t published anything with that
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: yet.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: we haven’t published anything uh yet. Uh but we we did collect data on the uh Spamburger and Mikey Cheryl uh races as well. Uh and are uh yeah are looking forward to releasing a study looking at the 2025 races
Josh Klemons: I mean, if you’re taking um requests,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: soon.
Josh Klemons: one thing that I think would be really interesting would be, especially retroactively, did did the sentiment analysis that you’re doing correlate with the end results in their victory? Like Mani won, but not, you know, he won, but he, you know, not as big as um Spanberger and like did Spanberger’s numbers stay higher.

Josh Klemons: So, I’d be very interested to see like how those correlate backwards.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Uh we have already done that work and we do have something to say about it.
Josh Klemons: Nice.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Uh but I’m not going to break any news
Josh Klemons: Today you should absolutely break some news today.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: today.
Josh Klemons: No. Okay. Um but I mean assuming you can find correlation there which obviously like you’ll have to run a lot of studies before I’m sure you’re willing to say that. Uh that does say a lot about you know how much we should be investing in this uh and
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah. What what I what I will tell you is in week one of the 2025 races,
Josh Klemons: whatnot.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: those three big races, um uh Mandani had a 50-50 sentiment of all the content
Josh Klemons: Wait, week one,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: mentioning him the last week right before leading up to election day.
Josh Klemons: meaning the last week. Okay, week one. Just making sure we’re on the same page.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So,
Josh Klemons: Okay, go ahead.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: at the time when you’re getting your your late deciders and your undecideds,
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Right.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: he was 5050 on all of YouTube.
Josh Klemons: 5050.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Mikey Cheryl was better than two to one positive to negative.
Josh Klemons: Wow.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I’m sorry,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: that’s Spamburger was better than two to one. Uh Mikey Cheryl was more than seven to one positive.
Josh Klemons: Wow. Okay. So, I can go do my own analysis
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: So there were I and I um we hadn’t done this piece of
Josh Klemons: now.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: the study yet like the the like a look at like uh paid media. Um I suspect that is a reflection of um paid media surging um in the the two governor’s races late um on the side of the eventual winners. Um but um I we’re we’re we’re really interested to see what the narrative clustering trends were going into election day that should give us some some some greater
Josh Klemons: When you’re talking about this sentiment content,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: insight.

Josh Klemons: you’re talking about third party actors. This is not the campaigns themselves. This is, you know, Joe Joe smartphone making a
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It’s everything. Yeah,
Josh Klemons: video.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: exactly. It’s it’s everything. I think one of like if I was going to like programmatically ma make a recommendation uh maybe I should write an oped about this um for campaigns this year it is get a handle on the overall conversation right what what are the messages your audiences are hearing that’s in addition to and inclusive of your paid media and your polling polling tells you what audiences are thinking, what they’re feeling maybe. Um, paid media metrics of like how many points someone’s running or how many new ads or what was the spend last week on the red line and the blue line um tell you give you another view into your campaign. But most candidates and brands outside of the very end of campaigns um where they’re spending a ton a ton of money control the narrative about their campaign. Most narratives are driven now by and and uh most most views of narratives are driven by organic creators and user generated content.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um and um uh what our perspective is is that we have to look at all of those things together and look at basically narrative competitive reporting rather than simply like spend
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: competitive reporting.
Josh Klemons: I mean that’s all super interesting and one thing that I took away from like something you started saying early on in that was like Cheryl was it 7 to1 right? Um and did that correlate with paid spending directly?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like the more that they spent the better the conversation was from other people because that would obviously be an argument that Democrat campaign Democratic campaign should start spending earlier in the cycle. Um, right now obviously most campaigns wait until the very end. And I’m a big advocate that we should be spending on meta from like day one. Like the second you’re running for office, you should just be live on meta because it’s the best possible and cheapest possible way to talk directly to your audience for like very little money. But like if that paid media is actually creating downstream, you know, consequences of people going pulling out their phones and talking about you online, that seems like you’re getting more money bang for your buck than you might realize.
Josh Klemons: And it might be worth thinking about like not wait till October to turn on your ads, but actually think about running smaller buys earlier just to like get people talking about you. I don’t know. Again, I’ll defer to you on like the findings, but that sounds like some pretty interesting potential takeaways from the
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: there.
Josh Klemons: study.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah, I think there are going to be some really interesting takeaways from the study. Um I think um there was some really interesting work done on in the New York City Mayor’s primary last summer. Um I I I uh if I’m remembering correctly, it was something that Andy Bar had posted uh about paid Okay,
Josh Klemons: Okay. Friend of the pod. Big big
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: good.
Josh Klemons: fan,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: uh about about uh uh you the the paid media tren spending trends uh in in in the primary.
Josh Klemons: right?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: And I thought that the it was surprising to most that the uh uh Mandani campaign was spending so much money on linear media,

Josh Klemons: Yep.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right? And it was because at least from as an outside observer was because they were doing so well online, right? they knew they were reaching audiences there and they had a real dominant like um uh you know share of voice let’s say share of narrative online. I think that like retroactively looks like a really smart decision. Um and and our our numbers align with that. I think what could have been missed in the general election was that the sentiment around me in online conversations was not as one-sided,
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right? That that 50,
Josh Klemons: it’s really interesting.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: right? And and so if I like those are two different circumstances, same candidate, different electorate, different time period. And I I think right I don’t think there’s a one-sizefits-all kind of paid media recommendation. There are scenarios and there are situations that are vastly vastly different. Um you know Senate primaries being a really interesting uh uh you know this year, right?
Josh Klemons: Yeah,

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: uh Democratic primaries,
Josh Klemons: for sure.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I suspect, are a really fascinating area for um candidates and interested parties to try to understand that dynamic because I bet there’s some disparities that people don’t want to get uh caught sleeping
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: on.
Josh Klemons: I mean Maine and Michigan are two places where I’m sure we could like learn a lot about what the public chatter, if you want to call it that, or whatever you want to call it, public conversation, how that correlates with the end results because I think there’s a few candidates that quite obviously like probably don’t even have I I would guess like less positive but also less negative because people are just not talking about them as much who might I don’t know. I’ll be very curious to see some of those results and if you wind up doing any studies on like what the conversation around them
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: was that and how it correlated to their wins or losses. Um I think that could be extremely interesting.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: You only look at YouTube.

Josh Klemons: Is that correct?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um we are have developed primarily on YouTube initially. Uh but we will not stay that way forever. Stay tuned for more.
Josh Klemons: Is is that just because the tech was easier to plug into or that’s just where you think the most important conversations are happening?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: We felt like YouTube was the most interesting platform that didn’t have this type of um insight. Um and as someone who with an advertising background, I also realized that there weren’t great options for targeting on YouTube for a lot of folks. And so we were really interested in one developing better insights and data, but also making it actionable for people um because you know like on meta you can do a ton of targeting um and there’s a lot of flexibility. You don’t have all the same uh options on
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Interesting.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: YouTube.
Josh Klemons: Uh during the 2024 campaign, uh one of the many things I did along with working 30 plus races was I worked with Courier on the FYP newsletter which was focused on the Tik Tok channels of Biden and then Harris and wells Trump and we saw all kinds of red flags that we were raising every week that like you know Harris was Biden then Harris was dominating Tik Tok and then we watched the Trump campaign sort of like wake up to what they were doing and replicated in like this disgusting

Josh Klemons: backwards you know evil racist way. Um, but like you know, and surpassed the Harris campaign as far as like raw metrics. So like I absolutely believe that those numbers, like do I think that if the Harris campaign had stayed ahead of the Trump campaign, she would have won the 2024 election? No. Do I think that there were warning signs that like the party maybe wasn’t like listening to loudly enough? I mean, that’s what we wrote a newsletter about every week for the last six months of the campaign and you know, um, so yeah. No, I I’m very interested in like hearing a YouTube u which I mean traditionally YouTube is a place for media and conversation but most campaigns aren’t even on YouTube like most campaigns they might be throwing their like launch video on there like you know some of their paid media stuff on there. Do you think that campaign should be spending more time on YouTube shorts and whatnot or is this much more about the public conversation than the campaign’s conversation?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: you YouTube is the largest video streaming platform.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It’s the largest connected TV platform. It’s the largest podcasting platform. And it’s the largest short form video platform and in the in the United
Josh Klemons: So yes,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: States. And it’s also the media company that people are spending more time
Josh Klemons: right.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: with on their televisions at home than anyone else. depending on the month it is 40 to 60% larger than Netflix in terms of time spent
Josh Klemons: Wild. That’s crazy.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: watching on the television according to Neielson if people are not at on YouTube um aggressively they’re missing massive opportunities the real challenge with YouTube is that it is so big that people uh really run the risk of like not spending enough and kind of basically not reaching the right audience with enough spec specificity.
Josh Klemons: I don’t need you to write a playbook,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um,
Josh Klemons: but like for the campaign listening or the strategist or the candidate, like they’re on YouTube, they’ve posted nothing but their launch video.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: yeah.
Josh Klemons: Like, is this they should be spending time on shorts, repurposing their reels and their Tik Toks into shorts, or are you talking about like actually investing in building like a studio so that they can like look good enough to like spend time on people’s TV?

Josh Klemons: Because obviously I and I don’t know the numbers,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but my understanding and my experience is like people don’t really watch shorts on TV, right? They’re watching long form content, but not shorts.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, is there like what’s your advice for somebody who’s like,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Right.
Josh Klemons: “Okay, you sold me. I should be on YouTube. Now
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um I I think I think it depends a little bit as to what your what your goals are.
Josh Klemons: what?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: If you’re in the phase of the campaign where you’re looking to build uh a base of support, organize supporters, raise money, build your CRM for your direct marketing campaign that is going to last a year. Um I think there are definitely paid media opportunities that you will want to go to first. Um if you’re looking to run a persuasion campaign and a long-term like like outreach campaign, you have to have YouTube as part of your mix. Now there are also versions of that story that include YouTube right away as well.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um sometimes it is actually very very good as an acquisition and a uh direct a direct donate um opportunity. When I was running the digital paid media uh campaign for Bernie Sanders in 2020 in his presidential campaign, we um we found that YouTube was one of our largest and most consistent um uh sources of acquisition uh of supporters um week in and week out. It was just it was just really it’s got scale and the targeting really worked well for uh for us.
Josh Klemons: Interesting. Okay. Uh, yeah, I know both YouTube and Meta have gotten harder to target on since 2020.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um, but still that’s like that’s wild to think that YouTube was outperforming Meta back then.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Well, it wasn’t that it was outperforming meta necessarily.
Josh Klemons: really
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: It was more that like meta was a real opportunity in moments and you could scale really quickly but you you would have to kind of go up and come down whereas YouTube was just it just turned like it was just a machine.

Josh Klemons: and that was that was all paid or that was organic or a combination?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um uh I was running the paid campaign.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um I sus I I I don’t I don’t I didn’t uh I don’t have all those stats on the
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. No,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: or
Josh Klemons: that’s that’s really interesting. Um, okay. So, uh, anything next for you in Ground Truth AI that you want to share?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Um we will be releasing uh a subscription product uh in the next uh month or so. Uh so stay tuned to that. Um uh basically it gets at the idea of um
Josh Klemons: Cool.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: you know tracking narratives um across uh paid and organic media. um uh using the clustering
Josh Klemons: Excited to see it.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: machine.
Josh Klemons: Um, how can folks stay in touch with you and make sure they know when your new model rolls out and all that fun stuff?
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Check out our uh website at clarifyintelligence.com.

Josh Klemons: Okay. And uh, can they find you on social anywhere? That’s not a
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: I am most active on LinkedIn um and have largely gotten off the
Josh Klemons: thing.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: other socials. uh myself personally.
Josh Klemons: Good for you.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Uh uh but uh
Josh Klemons: I’ll link to the site and to your LinkedIn and then um yeah.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: um
Josh Klemons: Cool. No, this was super interesting. Like I said, like um I am not a like data analyst, but I did spend a session uh you know, a campaign like playing one with uh Courier and I learned a ton. And so like when I saw this,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Sure.
Josh Klemons: it was just like a really interesting way to how people are talking about a conversation is the conversation. And I think that too many of us are just like, “Okay, we’ve got to put out our message.” But it’s like if you’re not getting people to join you in sharing that message, it’s pretty irrelevant what you’re trying to say.

Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: And like the world is so chaotic and so noisy and it’s our job to make sure that we’re not talking by ourselves into a
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: a void,
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but instead like giving people the tools and the resources they need to like join us in the conversation. And ICE obviously is a very organic one where like the entire city of Minneapolis now has an tragic opportunity to become storytellers in like a way that they should never have to be.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: totally.
Josh Klemons: But like it can’t be limited to just like these kind of horror stories.
Andrew Eldredge-Martin: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: It also has to be about the good stuff and the other bad stuff and you know everything in between. So it’s really interesting.