6 weeks to go: Political Ads for the Local & European Elections
The Local and European Elections are on June 7th, and until then The Briefing will be bringing you a weekly Political Ad Monitor of who is spending what online, and what we might gleam from this.
Do reach out with any thoughts, questions or ideas that you have for this ads monitor - I am very open to leads, to queries, to suggestions - you can DM me on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or email.
Today I am going to look at Meta (Facebook & Instagram) ads, which seems to be where most of the action is happening. WhoTargetsMe data compiles the data from Meta's ad archive, pulling together spend figures from the various accounts that are advertising for parties (ie. the party's main Facebook page, a leader's page, any candidates, Ógras etc.).
Their data shows that over 43% of all money spent on political ads in the last month was spent by Sinn Féin accounts. That is more than the next 3 biggest spenders - Fianna Fáil, Labour and Fine Gael - combined.
In cash terms, over the last month, the Meta archive estimates that across 31 different pages, Sinn Féin spent over €34k (though exact figures are tricky as the archive gives ranges).
Fianna Fáil are not too far behind - they have 44 pages running ads, spending an estimated €19.7k, 3 times Labour (€6.4k) and Fine Gael (€5.6k). A full breakdown is below.
So what are they spending this money on?
If we look just at the last week, and at the level of individual accounts rather than parties, we can see that 8 of the top 10 spenders were individual MEP candidates. Ireland's 3 European Parliament constituencies are huge, so it is unsurprising that candidates are using social media - this will ramp up in the coming weeks.
One interesting thing to note is that 6 of the top 10 spenders are Fianna Fáil MEP candidates (though you wouldn't always know that from their content...), and each campaign seems to be quite localised in terms of focus and messaging.
The highest spending individual in the archive is Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, a Fianna Fáil MEP candidate in Ireland South, who in a week has spent over €2k on ads, about a third of all money spent by the party in that period (and 4.5 times what her party running mate Billy Kelleher MEP spent).
The Meta Ad Library lets us see which ads Ms. Ní Mhurchú is running, and thanks to some new EU rules, some basic information on spending and reach.
Her ad that had the biggest reach was this one below, a simple text graphic with her photo, promising criminal sanctions for executives of Social Media companies for failures to protect children.
This ad is still running, and according to the archive has so far reached about 125k -150k people, and cost less than €200. Unsurprisingly that reach (see below) is in counties in the Ireland South constituency (which are far away, it should be noted, from the offices of said executives in Dublin's docklands).
The biggest spending account overall in the past week was the main Sinn Féin Ireland account. Their best reach was with this video post of the Dáil intervention by party leader Mary Lou McDonald calling for a general election during the voting in of our new Taoiseach.
That ad reached between 700 and 800 people, skewed young and towards men, a lot of them in Dublin, and set the party back a rather hefty €2.5k - €3k.
Next week I will take a look at the Google (inc. Search, YouTube, display ads etc.) and Twitter ad archives in more detail, though I have to say that the Twitter one is pretty painful to use.
It does not appear from the Google Ad Archive that there is a lot of activity happening there. (If you happen to run a political Google ad account, and are running ads but Google isn't displaying them in the archive - please to reach out to me at hello@LizCarolan.com).
If you found this interesting, consider sharing it with someone who might also like it, and / or asking folks to follow along and subscribe. And (repeating myself here) - I am very open to leads, to queries, to suggestions - you can DM me on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or email.