The Bharatiya Janata Party made the biggest political advertisement expenditure in a single month till date in May 2024, pumping in over ₹17 crore on Meta ads and ₹56 crore on Google ads, right in the middle of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.
Odisha's Biju Janata Dal came second, albeit far behind BJP, putting in ₹16.9 crore on Google ads and ₹9.8 crore on Meta ads. The Congress party trailed closely behind, spending a little over ₹18 crore on Google ads, and ₹4.2 crore on Meta ads.
The results of the 18th Lok Sabha elections turned out to be a shocker, with the ruling-Bharatiya Janata Party failing to gain majority seats in the parliament by 32 seats, and resorting to its coalition partners under the National Democratic Alliance, to form the government.
While the BJD spent big on political ads on social media, the party was ousted from the Odisha legislative assembly, and also failed to get even one out of the 21 parliamentary seats.
Bengal's Trinamool Congress (TMC) - which consolidated further control over the 40 parliamentary seats from the state - spent ₹51.6 lakh on Meta ads through two pages. Ads for the party were published on Google through political consultancy firm IPAC, which spent ₹79 lakh on the platform to promote the party.
Andhra Pradesh's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) - a crucial NDA ally which saw a massive revival in the state and parliamentary elections - spent ₹47 lakh on ads through its official Facebook page, and ₹3.5 crore on Google ads, last month.
In contrast, it's rival Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) spent ₹15.43 lakh on its official Meta pages, and ₹6.6 on Google ads.
Surrogate Pages
Surrogate pages on Meta targeting the ruling party's opponents added up to another ₹2.2 crore last month.
In May, BOOM reported on how these pages were filled with Islamophobic content, and had been boosted with ads to the tune of ₹4.4 crore. As the polling phases continued, pro-BJP surrogate pages saw a decline in ad expenditure, as BJP directed its funds to its official pages.
We also found a surrogate page targeting the BJP. The page "The Honest Odia" took shots at BJP leaders, and its policies, and were shared primarily in Odia. Ads to the tune of ₹16 lakh were promoted from this page last month.
Spotify And Snap
Meta and Google platforms were not the only ones to see political advertising in India this election season.
A recent report by Hindustan Times highlighted how such ads had spilled over to other niche platforms like audio streaming giant Spotify. However, due to lack of ad transparency efforts, the report was unable to ascertain the amount spent by political parties on ads on Spotify.
Yet another new platform to see digital political ads was Snap, earlier known as Snapchat, where the "BJP spent over ₹19.9 lakh on six ads that generated a total of 21 million impressions". These ads primarily targeted the young users, and first time voters.
Snap had partnered with BOOM during the election period, where ad content was sent to us for fact-checking before they were published.