The advertisement began with a panning shot of Altoona, Iowa, a town of 20,000 near Des Moines. The camera moved from a diner to a farm to a high school football field. To the pluck of guitar strings, a voice-over promoted a boon for the local economy.
“We’re bringing jobs here,” the ad said. “For us, and for our next generation.”
The ad’s folksy vibes were not for a political candidate. They were for a data center that Meta had built in Altoona — part of an ad campaign by the Silicon Valley giant to shape a new narrative around the vast computing facilities that power artificial intelligence.
Meta, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have embarked on a building spree in the A.I. race, investing hundreds of billions of dollars to erect data centers to develop the technology. In doing so, they have fueled an increasingly political issue, with President Trump and lawmakers across the country criticizing the computing sites for driving up energy costs and straining local water supplies.
So in November and December, Meta spent $6.4 million to run a series of ads — including the one about Altoona — in the television markets of eight state capitals such as Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Tallahassee, Fla., as well as Washington, D.C., according to data from AdImpact, an analytics firm.
Meta most likely bought the ads “with the goal of shaping policy decisions” and reaching lawmakers, said Michael Beach, the chief executive of Cross Screen Media, a marketing analytics firm.
Other tech giants are also aiming to influence public opinion on data centers. Amazon is helping to fund a similar ad campaign in Virginia, where it operates dozens of data centers. The campaign — focused on job growth and electricity costs — began in December 2024 and is still running, backed by Virginia Connects, a nonprofit created by the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group.
Steve Padilla, a Democratic state senator in California who proposed a bill last year to regulate rising energy costs from data centers, said such ads were a tech company tactic. “If you like sports, if you have kids, and you love America, you’ve got to love data centers, right?” he said.
In a statement, Ryan Daniels, a spokesman for Meta, did not comment on its ads but said the company paid the full costs of energy used by its data centers.
Amazon declined to comment. In a statement, Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, said Virginia Connects helped “inform communities and policymakers about the data center industry,” but he did not address the ad campaign.
Meta operates 26 data centers in the United States and has said it will spend $600 billion to build new ones in the coming years. Last year, the company also unveiled two political action committees to back candidates who support A.I. during the midterm elections. (Meta said its spending on the ad campaign was separate from the PACs.)
Meta has highlighted how data centers can bring jobs and tax revenue to places in need of economic development. It and other tech giants have hired “community affairs” workers to build local trust, according to job listings seen by The New York Times.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said data centers became an issue on Capitol Hill early last year when constituents started complaining en masse about rising electric bills and blamed data centers. That has made A.I. infrastructure part of the larger debate about affordability, along with things like the cost of eggs, he said.
This month, Mr. Van Hollen introduced a bill to regulate data center energy use. The measure is backed by other Democrats, but the issue is becoming bipartisan, he said. President Trump has recently made several statements about data centers and energy costs.
“We are the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must ‘pay their own way,’” Mr. Trump posted on social media on Jan. 12.
Diane Papan, a Democratic state assemblywoman in California, said she had seen Meta’s ads while working in Sacramento last year.
In April, she introduced a bill to require tech companies to publicize data center water use; Gov. Gavin Newsom, another Democrat, vetoed it in October. In an interview, Ms. Papan said that she was disappointed by how much the tech industry opposed the bill and that Meta and other tech companies “were not front and center to work with us.”
“What I very much worry about with this ad campaign is localities committing to this industry and then saying in 10 years, ‘What have we done to ourselves?’” Ms. Papan said.
Meta built its first data center in Altoona in 2013 and has expanded from one building there to a three-million-square-foot complex, said Chad Quick, the economic development director of Altoona.
Mr. Quick, who describes Meta’s relationship with Altoona as “mutually beneficial,” said a film crew from Los Angeles had spent a week shooting scenes around town last year. After the ad aired, people from other towns called to ask whether they should welcome new data centers, too, he said.
His response was positive. “Our experience has not been the experience that some communities have had,” Mr. Quick said.
Eli Tan covers the technology industry for The Times from San Francisco.
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