BJP spends too much on political advertising on Facebook as Congress spends too little — yet again

• Over ₹40 million were spent on political ads on Facebook in India over the last month.
• More than half that amount was spending by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), one of the primary contenders in the upcoming general elections in India.
• Their main opposition, the Indian National Congress, only spent around ₹300,000 on political advertising on Facebook.

The general elections are coming up and political parties in India are leaving no stone unturned. Facebook’s Ad Archive report shows that over ₹40 million were spent on political advertising in India.

And, over ₹20 million came from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the country’s country's largest political party in terms of representation and a primary contender in the upcoming elections.


Congress on the other hand, only accounted for ₹300,000 on political ads on Facebook, regional parties and backers included.



This isn’t the first time that BJP has shot head of Facebook in terms of political advertising.

Before the 5-state assembly elections in December 2018, BJP was already the number one advertiser on television according to the Broadcast Audience Research Council — putting them ahead of Netflix, Trivago and even consumer goods companies like Hindustan Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser.

Indirect routes

Even though the advertiser was not the BJP directly, just over ₹10 million were spent on ‘Bharat ke Mann ki Baat’ — a pro-BJP page — that too, without a political ad disclaimer.

Another BJP supporting page, Nation with NaMo, spent ₹5 million to advertising — ads, that again, ran without disclaimers.

Even the page responsible for the most amount of political ads in India — 2,153 ads — is a pro-BJP page called NaMo supporters. Their ad spent, meanwhile was limited to, ₹197,031.


Facebook is working on rectifying the ‘no disclaimer’ issue by taking down political ads that are place without the necessarily information — including government campaigns like Digital India.


(with inputs from IANS)

See also:
Facebook's '10 Year Challenge' takes a political dimension in India