Are YouTube and Facebook bothering you with politicians’ ads? Nothing unusual. PiS and KO spent millions on this

Foundation Stefan Batory was prepared on the basis of Sotrender data, in which the authors point out that as the campaign developed, electoral committees spent more and more money on advertising in . PiS and KO spending between September 28 and October 3 were 4-5 times higher than the week before.

“The leader in reach in the analyzed period remained the Civic Coalition’s ads, which achieved a total of 128 million views compared to 118 million views of Law and Justice. Similarly to expenses, these results are about 4 times higher than in the previous wave of the study,” we read in the report.

Election committees spend millions of zlotys on advertising on the Internet

Although KO has the most views, they are not the ones who spent the most on the online campaign. By October 3, it had spent PLN 6.2 million on online advertising. Second on this list KO – PLN 3.7 million. Then there is Nowa Lewica (PLN 1.7 million), Trzecia Droga (PLN 1.1 million) and Niepartyjni Samorządowcy (PLN 0.5 million). The Confederation spent the least, only PLN 0.4 million –

As Sotrender’s president, Dr. Jan Zając, explains to the portal, these are expenses that the platforms disclose themselves, as part of the adopted openness policy. “Rz” also notes that the above data may be incomplete.

The data concerns Instagram, YouTube and Google. “After three waves, according to ‘Rzeczpospolita’ calculations, five committees: PiS, Civic Coalition, New Left, Confederation and Non-Party Local Government, left approximately PLN 9.5 million on these websites,” we read on the website.

There is also interesting data on the distribution of spending by individual committees on online advertising, as shown in the graphic below. PiS focused mainly on YouTube, on which it spends more than any other party. Slightly less than one third of this amount is allocated to Facebook, and the third is spent on advertising on Google. PiS spends the least on Instagram.

How are the expenses of election committees distributed on the Internet campaign? photo: Batory Foundation

The Civic Coalition also places emphasis on online advertising. They focus most on Facebook, followed by Instagram and YouTube, which has a slightly lower result. Donald Tusk’s party advertises least often on Google.

The New Left chooses Facebook and Instagram, they advertise slightly less on Google. Third Way almost completely abandoned YouTube and Google and focused primarily on Facebook and Instagram.

How do electoral committees advertise themselves?

The advertising on which the most money was spent in the analyzed period is related to safety. On the Meta platform, these are advertisements from KW Law and Justice referring to refugees, security and, indirectly, to the referendum, promoting the slogan 4 × NO, while the Civic Platform is trying to show Jarosław Kaczyński as a person who is unable to ensure security. The Google platform (YouTube) is dominated by Law and Justice ads referring to Donald Tusk in the context of a security threat.

– analyzes the Batory Foundation.

Parties focus primarily on wide-reach advertising and are less likely to choose micro-targeting. “On the Meta platform, the main committees still focus on ads with a relatively large reach, targeted at segments larger than 100,000 recipients. Law and Justice maintains the leading position in the category of the least specific ads (above one million people), and Nowa Lewica has the most ads addressed to the 500,000-1 million segments,” we read in the report.