The Punjab state government's official Facebook page spent over ₹3.2 crore in the past month on advertisements on the social media platform, emerging as the highest spending page in the given time period.
Facebook's ad library report from October 9 - November 7 shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party-linked official pages have spent far less than its opponents - the Aam Aadmi Party, and the Indian National Congress.
Meanwhile, smear page Paltu Express, which we reported as the highest spending page in September, had now changed its name to 'Ek dhoko Kejriwalne', and emerged as the second highest spender with ₹1.9 crore of expenditure.
We looked at the top 15 highest spenders on Facebook ads, and found some interesting trends.
With Gujarat elections less than a month away, last month's ad report highlights how political ads dominate Facebook's advertisement market in India.
Among the 15 top pages we looked at, 10 of them were posting political ads on a regular basis.
The highest spending page in the list, belonging to the Government of Punjab sponsored ads to promote the state government.
We have reached out to Punjab government's media department, and the story will be updated with comments if and when we receive them.
Who's Spending In Gujarat?
Furthermore, we found four pages in the list that were directly linked to the upcoming Gujarat elections. Three of them were the official Facebook pages of AAP, INC and BJP, while the other was the smear page 'Ek dhoko Kejriwalne', which made attacks on AAP and party supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
The page had spent ₹1.9 crore in October, while it had spent around ₹58.6 lakh in September, highlighting a 130% increase in spending between the two months.
BOOM observed in the past report that the posts sponsored by this smear page resembled other such pages that had targeted the opponents of the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of elections in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
In contrast, BJP Gujarat's official page got a much smaller amount to sponsor ads, with both AAP and INC outspending the incumbent party on their respective official pages.
With ₹44.76 lakhs spent in the past month, AAP Gujarat's official page is the highest spender among the three, followed by INC Gujarat's page which spent ₹14.38, while BJP trailed closely with ₹14.03.
AAP-linked Pages Spent The Most
Pages affiliated to Kejriwal's party came out as the highest spender in the 30 days between October 9 and November 7. The four pages - Government of Punjab, Aam Aadmi Party Gujarat, Ek Moko AAP Ne, and Make India No. 1 - had a cumulative expenditure of ₹3.9 crore during this time period.
The smear page 'Ek dhoko Kejriwalne', which is a satirical take on AAP's page 'Ek moko AAP ne', is the second highest spending entity with around ₹1.86 crore of expenditure last month. Since its inception in July 22, initially as Paltu Express, this page has spent an overall sum of ₹2.66 crore in ads.
Pages linked to INC came third with a spending ₹90.4 lakh, while BJP was far behind with an expenditure of ₹26.4 lakh.
