Today, the use of social networks to promote ideas, views, and results of activities is common for business community, for public figures, for politicians and political parties. The process was largely boosted by the introduction of targeted advertising on social networks, later supported by micro-targeting.
These mechanisms allowed advertisers to broadcast ads not to all users (as was the case of newspapers, billboards, or television), but only to a specific group of people who are the target audience of a business or a political project. Thus, social media have reduced the cost of promotional campaigns, as well as opened the advertising market for those who could not afford it before.
In Ukraine, the inclusion of advertising on social media in the standard range of PR campaigns is quite difficult to track: Russia's VKontakte and Odnoklassniki did not offer to share ads on their platforms, and Facebook and Instagram launched the Advertising Library as late as in early 2019.
On the other hand, in the global segment of these social networks, advertising has influenced electoral processes, referendums, and other political events since 2015.
In this article, OPORA analyzed how popular advertising is on social media around the world and whether the popularity of advertising in a particular country can be related to its price.
Facebook Before and After Advertising
A tool for paid promotion on the social network Facebook appeared back in 2007. At that time, the social network presented advertising on its site as an "opportunity to be part of a dialogue" with users. Digital entrepreneurs, companies, and brands could join Facebook as regular users, whose posts appeared in the feed and could be watched by their Facebook friends.
According to Statista, the gradual improvement of advertising opportunities has become the engine of revenue growth. That is why Facebook is interested in promoting paid online ads, which does not always match the interests of national states.
A particularly significant leap in Meta's (the then Facebook's) revenue occurred after 2016 – the company's revenue almost doubled in a year. Donald Trump alone spent $ 81 million online to run for president.
Moreover, in 2016, after the pandemonium with Cambridge Analytica, the world focused on the risks and dangers associated with online advertising campaigns.
By the way, if you are tired of seeing mentions of this ancient high-profile case – you are definitely not alone in this. At the very least, Mark Zuckerberg himself will feel your pain, because very soon the case of Cambridge Analytica will move from high-profile media headlines to the courtroom (yes, you took it right – before that, the scandal stayed at the level of indignation and deep concerns).
Due to public pressure, Meta has established separate rules for posting political ads on its social networks. Also in May 2018, a monitoring tool was launched for US users – the Facebook Ads Library. Currently, the option to track advertising and the money spent on it is available in 95 countries.
During the Library's operations, users published nearly 25 million political advertising posts, worth a total of 3.865 billion USD.
Today, the United States is the undisputed leader in the numbers of political ads. More than 10,000 advertisements target US users every day. Brazil follows the cause, where political advertising is almost three times less frequent. About 3,000 ads are broadcast in this segment per day. Twice as little political advertising is published in Mexico – almost 1,500 ads a day.
As to the number of political ads, Ukraine ranks 8th in the world – almost 500 political advertisements are posted on Ukrainian Facebook every day.
Average number of ads a day
How do you Determine the Cost of Advertising on Facebook?
The unprecedented advertising activity of politicians and parties from different countries on social networks raises other important questions: why is advertising activity so different in every country? For example, why do more than 10,000 political ads appear in the United States every day, and as few as 52 posts in the neighboring Canada? One possible answer could be about the cost of political advertising on social networks.
Although in all countries the minimum cost of advertising is the same (1 US dollar), the average cost is quite different. Thus, the first place in terms of the cost of advertising posts on Facebook and Instagram is claimed by Canada, where you will have to pay an average of almost $ 2,000 for one promoted post.
Second goes Belgium, where the advertiser will have to pay almost $ 1,500 for one ad. On the other hand, in the United States, the cost of one advertising post is under $ 250. In Ukraine, one political advertising post costs only about $ 35, on average.
Cost of one ad, USD
How exactly is the price of political advertising generated? If the advertising services provider is the Meta company, then why is the price of one advertising post hundreds of times different for Samoa and Norway?
Nobody knows for certain. The appropriate mechanism covers such a number of automated algorithms that it is virtually impossible to answer the question precisely. However, we still do know something. The key principle is that advertising competes for the attention of users through an auction.
When an advertiser creates an ad, they set certain features that determine their target audience, such as age, gender, place of residence, interests, social status, etc.
The task of the social network is to find a person whose features match the most of settings for the target advertising audience. Most of these characteristics we set ourselves when registering on social networks or filling out information about ourselves on the page.
Facebook can get other features of a person by collecting data about their behavior on the social media, such as what posts they liked, what links they followed, etc.
However, hundreds of advertisers compete for the attention of each user of the social media every day, although they hit the target category. No matter how much Facebook wants to, it can't show all these ads. Otherwise, the user feeds will include advertising posts only. Therefore, Facebook calls a bid for the attention that advertising can win if it scores a maximum of three points:
- Cost – How much the advertiser is willing to pay for the sharing of this advertising post.
- Probability of interaction of a specific user with a particular ad – whether the advertiser achieves its goal if a person sees the ad in their feed;
- Advertising quality (depends on many indicators – reviews of other people's advertising, the use of clickbait or headlines such as "Story of the Day!", "British researchers proved that… ", as well as on how essential information is hidden).
In combination, the indicators of probability of interaction and quality determine the relevance of advertising for each individual user. Quite often, according to Facebook, the auction is won by ads cheaper than the maximum bid but more relevant to a particular user.
Whenever you see an ad on your Facebook or Instagram page, you should know that it has won the auction that concluded that the ad was the best for you at that time.
Understanding the mechanism of the auction allows us to explain the pricing patterns in different markets of political advertising in the world. Thus, whereas in the USA, the average cost of a promoted post of a politician or a party is USD 226, it means that advertisers in the USA are ready to pay the price. At the same time, in Kenya, advertisers cannot generally afford to pay the price for 1 political ad. Instead, they are willing to pay about $ 2 for it.
However, it should be noted that a market economy does not always work. In particular, in mid-January 2022, The Guardian reported that Google and Facebook might have abused the value of advertising on their platforms: they inflated prices and suppressed competition. The difference between the price reported to advertisers and the actual price of advertising was allegedly appropriated and used by the company to manipulate future auctions and expand its monopoly.
Therefore, unless the advertising auctions procedure on social media become transparent and traceable, the declared purpose and mechanisms of selecting an ad, and their prices, remain rather questionable.
Why is it Profitable to Choose Political Advertising on Social Media?
One of the key marketing metrics when choosing a site for advertising is how much one engaged user is going to cost.
This rationale can be tracked in post-election analytics, when NGOs, think tanks, or the media estimate how much a vote in an election cost a politician or party.
In the case of social networks, you can calculate the "cost per user" through the cost of one click on the ad. At the same time, for political advertising, the online attention of one potential voter is the cheapest option. That is why it is so highly attractive to politicians.
For example, as mentioned above, the cost of one political advertisement in Ukraine is UAH 995 ($ 35).
At the same time, on television, during the election period, the cost of 1 second of advertising can vary from UAH 1 to almost UAH 3,000. Renting a billboard is also not cheap enough (it depends on the location), and the price varies from UAH 267 to 533 per day.
However, unlike television and billboards, advertising on social networks has an important advantage of micro-targeting mechanism.
Micro-targeting is a technology that allows you to show advertising not to all Internet users but only to those people who are most likely to vote for a particular politician or a party (for example, ads of the "Opposition Platform for Life" are more appropriate to target the East and South of Ukraine rather than Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk). Thus, the expenses of politicians or parties become optimized: you communicate directly with your audience through social media, and the number of "odd" users is much smaller than with using TV or outdoor advertising.
In general, Facebook advertising within and outside election campaigns seems to be a fairly justified tool. It is more simple, cheaper, and more accurate than other options for promotion among potential voters.
Find below our analysis of how the promotion options through political advertising are treated in the countries with the highest number of advertisements published per day.
Brazil
The option to track the spending of politicians and political parties on advertising on Facebook and Instagram became available in Brazil a year later than in Ukraine, in August, 2020. Since then, until January 25, 2022, the Brazilian segment of social networks published almost 1.5 million advertising posts, with a total value of more than $ 29 million.
However, in reality, the story of political advertising in this country began much earlier. Following the infamous US election in 2016, Brazil was concerned about the impact of political advertising on social media, as in 2018 Brazil was to hold presidential elections. In addition, one of the presidential candidates, Jair Bolsonaro, used only Facebook for his campaign, completely ignoring the traditional media.
This election campaign has been declared quite "dirty": massive disinformation campaigns were launched against Bolsonaro's rival, on Facebook and the WhatsApp, a messenger used by ⅔ of Brazilian voters.
Jair Bolsonaro's strategy of using social media to promotion proved extremely effective. Not only did the politician win the 2018 election quite easily, but he still maintains a de facto monopoly on disseminating information within the country.
Although Brazil's Supreme Court tried to limit the president's ability to spread misinformation by forcing Facebook to remove pages of presidential supporters who spread it, and Facebook itself said it intended to reduce the amount of political content in Brazilian feeds, the situation hardly changed.
In 2021, 80% of Brazilians received news via WhatsApp. With no independent media in the country, it allows the president to dominate the information space.
At the same time, attempts by Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube to regulate the spread of misinformation on their platforms have also failed: now the main "base" of Bolsonaro to communicate with supporters is the Telegram, and the number of Brazilian users is growing rapidly.
An illustrative example of the fact that online advertising and social networks in Brazil are still the most relevant way for promotion, is that on December 7, 2021, Jair Bolsonaro became "Man of the Year" according to Time magazine (according to the reader's vote) , with a quarter of the 9 million votes cast online.
It is likely that during the new presidential election in Brazil, in October 2022, social media and advertising will once again become the main battleground for votes.
Mexico
Similar to Brazil, the advertising library in Mexico started operating in August, 2020. Since its launch and until January 2022, the country has broadcast almost 612,000 advertising messages, with a total value of just over $ 33 million.
However, political advertising and promotion through Facebook and messengers appeared there earlier. In the summer of 2018, Mexico held presidential elections that were marked by the spread of disinformation on Facebook against the leader of the election race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Networks of coordinated pages and bots were involved in discrediting the candidate. Attempts by Facebook to reduce their influence were not very successful (however, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador still won the election).
In general, Mexico is a perfect example of using social media as a basis for a black PR strategy. It is not surprising: according to local media, every adult with an Internet access has a Facebook page.
As in Brazil, there is no free media in Mexico: all major newspapers and TV channels have long cooperated with the government.
That is why for most Mexicans, Facebook is basically the only source of alternative information that can be trusted. Besides, social media promotion is important for opposition candidates who do not have access to traditional media.
Indonesia
In India, the Advertising Library appeared in February, 2019. Today, this country is the largest market for Meta, where Facebook has an audience over 349 million users, almost three times more than the American segment of the network.
Although the social network was inaccessible to Indian users until 2011, due to censorship, Facebook became a key tool of political campaigning before the national parliamentary elections of the same year.
During the election campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dominated the information space. BJP spent more than 4.9 million rupees (almost $ 200,000) on political advertising online. Like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the BJP not only won the parliamentary elections but also continued to dominate the information space. During and shortly after the election, BJP's political advertising and the related pages accounted for 70% of all political advertising on social media.
In addition to official pages, political advertisements campaigning for the BJP and its leader, incumbent Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, were broadcast from campaign pages allegedly unrelated to the political force. Moreover, even 18 months after the election, the BJP has retained its position as the largest advertiser of political advertising on the social network Facebook in India, with a total cost of over 4.6 million rupees during this period.
However, the number of political advertising from the ruling force is only one side of political campaigning.
In addition to official party accounts, BJP campaigning was carried out from pages allegedly created by party fans. There is no mention of the party in the disclaimers to their advertisement but some of them have the same address as the party's headquarters. Most BJP pages used the same phone numbers and created fake websites.
The problem for India is not only in the number of advertisements and advertisers, but also in the content of the messages. Meta company is trying to fight with hate speech on Facebook but the efficiency of these activities is questionable.
Back in 2020, The Times reported suspicions of Meta's special treatment of members of India's ruling party. For example, a disinformation letter from BJP representative, Shiladitya Dev, was shared on this social media during the year, and was removed only after The Times contacted the Facebook administration.
The post hits two categories at the same time: inciting hatred against Muslims living in India and spreading misinformation. Similar cases occurred with other party members.
Such "relaxed rules" can be related to the fact that Facebook avoids conflicts with the party that runs its largest market. Second, ignoring social media violations may be due to Meta's top managers' ties to the BJP.
For example, Shivnath Thukral, Facebook's public policy manager in India, worked on a political campaign for several BJP members before his career at Meta.
Ankhi Das, the head of India's public policy department on Facebook, resigned after allegations of tolerating incitement to hatred against Indian Muslims by members of the ruling party.
At the end of 2021, the public learned more about the SMM strategies of India's top politicians, after the so-called "The Facebook Papers" going open.
These documents contain information about how the party administered a network of bots and fake accounts that spread anti-Muslim hate speech during the election campaign.
An internal investigation by Facebook found that during the race, about 40% of the most popular posts in the Indian segment of the network were "wound" by non-authentic accounts of bots. Anti-Muslim messages were also actively distributed among large groups and on public pages.
Most of these posts are linked to Indian politician Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who has close ties to the ruling BJP.
The Facebook Papers showed that Meta was well aware of the problem, it "did not have the resources" to solve it. At the same time, these documents show that only 13% of the company's budget for combating misinformation is directed to the international market, and all other funds are used to combat misinformation in the United States.
Conclusion
Today, advertising and promotion on social networks is one of the main ways to attract the attention of voters, which is used by politicians and parties around the world.
A special role belongs to social media where alternative sources of information are either censored or underdeveloped. At the same time, the transparency of the mechanisms of "advertising auctions", the pricing for advertising messages, and the ability of social media to track attempts to abuse these tools need to be improved.
Although most social media are not ready to reveal the details of the algorithms that determine the main indicators of advertising, countries may require greater transparency, at least in the national context.
Given the need to track the real costs of political advertising on Facebook, OPORA emphasizes the relevance to show all the costs of political advertising in Ukrainian hryvnia.
The ad library does not reflect the exact cost of a particular post, but only their range of plus / minus $ 100. Whereas for the USA such inaccuracy is irrelevant, because one post usually costs more than $ 200, then Ukrainian users lose a significant amount of data on the actual costs incurred by politicians.
Original publication: Ukrainian Pravda