The top twenty political advertisers spent ₹5.98 crore on 7,901 ads on Meta’s platforms in November, while 15,405 political ads worth ₹36.31 crore were published through Google Ads in the same duration. Congress outspent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in terms of ad spending across both platforms.
On Meta platforms, the BJP accounted for 43.2% of ad spending, or ₹2.58 crore, while Congress contributed ₹2.24 crore for 37.48% of the pie. The majority of ad spending on Meta was in Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. Meanwhile, on Google Ads, Congress spent ₹14.3 crore, Bharat Rashtra Samithi spent ₹12.1 crore, and BJP spent ₹4.16 crore.
Most of the ad spend on Google was for video ads, and the eves of the four polling days in November did not see any significant increase in ad spending. The BJP accounts for almost 24% of all ad spending since February 2019, while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) accounts for 10.38%. The Congress has spent ₹14.6 crore on Google Ads since 2019.
Direct and indirect ads reveal a difference in perceptions of spending on Meta platforms. While Congress and its state units spent ₹2.05 crore on 1,263 ads, the BJP spent ₹1.53 crore on 3,122 ads. Indirect ads were also more favorable to the BJP. Political campaign management firms and production houses also contributed to ad spending, including Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC, which ran ads for Andhra Pradesh CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Both Meta and Google have stringent advertising policies for political ads, but opportunities exist for parties to engage in surreptitious advertising through off-the-book transactions and the use of social media influencers to spread political content.(datetime, title of document, team that prepared it)