With general elections a little over a month away, the Bharatiya Janata Party is pumping in vast amounts of money on social media advertisements. In the month of February, the ruling party spent over ₹5.5 crore on its official Facebook page, and over a whopping ₹29 crore on Google ads.
Odisha's Biju Janata Dal's official Facebook page was the second in the list of top spending pages, promoting ads to the tune of over ₹97 lakh. Furthermore, a shadowy network of obscure pages called Ulta Chashma and Political X-ray spent over ₹67 lakh and ₹50 lakh respectively.
West Bengal's Trinamool Congress, and Andhra Pradesh's Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party also featured in the list of the top 10 spending pages on Facebook, with former's official Facebook page, and the YSRCP-run page for its healthcare programme Jagananna Suraksha spending over ₹23 lakh and ₹22 lakh, respectively.
BJP, through its official page and its election page Phir Ek Bar Modi Sarkar, has spent nearly ₹6.1 crore, and stands out as the highest advertiser on Facebook in February.
The second highest advertiser is Ulta Chashma, which spent nearly ₹1.2 crore on its obscure pages Ulta Chashma and Political X-ray. Furthermore, an investigation by BOOM found that Ulta Chashma is running a shadow network of at least six pages on Facebook, with an overall ad expenditure of over ₹2 crore in a short span of time, since it was set up it November 2023.
These pages had no clear link to the BJP, but targeted parties in opposition to the BJP, while promoting the party's top leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BOOM also found these pages targeting religious minority groups with misinformation and hate posts.
Google's ad transparency centre showed a similar trend as Meta - the ruling party appeared to be way ahead of others in terms of pumping in money to promote ads, with the month of February alone seeing an expenditure of nearly ₹30 crore.
The party had spent nearly ₹80 crore since May 31, 2018, according to Google. This would suggest that just in the month of February, its expenditure on Google ads rose by 60% from its entire expenditure in the past 5 years.
Other big advertisers were the central government and the state government of Odisha, spending ₹14 crore and ₹1.8 crore, respectively.
Political consultancy firm IPAC also featured as a big advertiser, promoting ads to the tune of ₹1.8 crore, while a DMK-affiliated agency called Populous Empowerment Network pushed out ads to the tune of ₹63 lakh.
These figures highlight the importance of social media platforms for political campaigning, while revealing the ruling party's intentions to not hold back on its expenditure to promote itself, leaving behind its political competitors.
