It is also a tiny amount compared with what the Warren campaign has spent on digital advertising: more than $6 million in total on Facebook and Google, according to data from those companies.

Ms. Warren speaks somewhat contemptuously about television ads, preferring instead to talk about her desire to build a “grass-roots movement” that would pay off in November 2020.

“We can’t have a model of, scoop up a bunch of money, run a bunch of TV ads at the last minute and then count on all of the folks to show up,” she said earlier this year.

Still, Ms. Warren is planning to spend millions on television advertising as time goes on. In September, her team announced what it described as an eight-figure advertising campaign in the first four states to vote — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — that would include digital and television ads. Her campaign is set to air commercials in Iowa next week, according to Advertising Analytics, and it has reserved millions of dollars of television ads in those four states in early 2020.

The Warren campaign decided to produce its television ads in-house “rather than adopt the consultant-driven approach of other campaigns (and the big commissions and fees that come along with it),” her campaign manager, Roger Lau, wrote in a memo in September announcing the eight-figure ad campaign. Her team unveiled three ads at the time, including the 60-second spot that was shown on Saturday.

Ms. Warren visited Iowa State’s campus in Ames for a town hall event last week and will return to Iowa on Friday for a four-day visit.

She is hoping she fares better in the caucuses than the school’s football team fared on Saturday: They entered the game as the favorite but ended up losing to Oklahoma State, 34-27.