Facebook rakes in Rs 105 crore from political ads in 3 months, BJP top spender
Facebook has emerged as the second major social media platform after Google in terms of political advertising in India. The platform has collected Rs 105 crore in three months from political advertisers alone, as per Facebook India’s ad library report. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with its state units has been the top spender on the social media platform, shelling out over Rs 21 crore in the last three months. Besides, there are individual candidates and party affiliate FB pages across several languages that have also spent substantially to woo millions of digitally connected voters, the data reveals.
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Notably, BJP has been the top spender on Google and YouTube as well. In the last three months, the party’s central unit has spent more than Rs 81 crore on ads, as per Google's Ad Transparency data.
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Following the BJP, is the Indian National Congress with advertising spends on Facebook running into more than Rs 10 crore in the same period. Biju Janata Dal and its affiliates have invested almost similar amounts. Other political parties such as AAP, Shiv Sena and TDP have also spent on FB albeit their expenses are in a few lakhs. Proxy pages & surrogate advertisers Interestingly, a lot of proxy pages or surrogate advertisers have been spending a lot in India’s elections. A closer look at the data reveals that hundreds of proxy pages and surrogate advertisers have been consistently spending on FB to propagate political stuff related to particular parties. For instance, Ama Chinha Sankha Chinha, which is listed at three places in the list, had cumulatively spent over Rs eight crore in the last three months. The FB pages related to this identity have been promoting Naveen Patnaik, CM of Odisha, who leads BJD. Similarly, Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar, which has nearly 5 million followers, posts content related to BJP and PM Narendra Modi. Hath Badlega Halaat (3 lakh followers) is aligned with the Congress. A large number of advertisers listed in the FB ad library appear to be surrogate advertisers as they propagate memes, cartoons and slurs targeting prominent political figures, mainly opposition ones. This includes “Mahathugbandhan” (1.4 million followers, Rs 1.3 Cr), Political X Ray (7 K followers, Rs 1.3 cr) and “Bharat Todo Gang” (99K followers, Rs 9 lakh spend). Shadow advertising accounts for roughly one-fourth of all political advertisements on FB. The prevalence of surrogate and shadow advertising on social media platforms in India has been reported during the previous Lok Sabha and state elections as well. Google India and Meta India reported nearly Rs 28,000 crore and Rs 18,000 crore, respectively, in terms of ad revenues in FY23. Though it is unclear how much of their revenue came from political advertising, experts believe that a significant chunk of Meta and Google’s revenue comes from political ads that are often floated round the year due to state or local elections in some or other part of the country. In the year of general elections, the amount of advertising skyrockets as stakes are high.
Tags : Facebook India General Elections 2024 Bjp Political Ads