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