press subsidies became a thing as soon as there were printing presses. FEC donations shown in the linked document (p.26) shows that there is a regime of publishing corporation that all contribute into the FEC system, year in year out. There are similar regimes in every sector of the economy also (p 22-30). I think the information systems that we have have evolved to meet the needs of wealth. I'm also assuming what we can see in the FEC data is just a subset of the actors involved. Facebook was running copious advertisements before the election for useless products like a trenching attachment for a homeowner sized chain saw, so you could dig a trench in your yard using your chainsaw. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K1KY40X1kkILTiBXpi11qDYGMlbVLqrM/view?usp=sharing