Monitoring of Political Ads on Facebook over first half September

What party or candidate spent the most, who shares ads with mistakes, and what Ukrainian party paid for Facebook ads in RUB.

In the beginning of autumn, most politicians and political forces planning to run for local elections have become more active in social media. OPORA has explored activity levels of political parties on Facebook in June to August, 2020. The analysis of expenses incurred by political forces in the first half of September shows that some of them spent for advertising in social media more than over the summer.

As to Ukrainian segment of Facebook, OPORA experts identified 2,210 pages that were using political ads in the first half of September. Most of them spent under USD 100. That is why we focused on those who spent more. There are 415 pages like that. Mostly, they are the pages of political parties, candidates for local elections, party members and media pages. In total, they posted 19,429 posts and spent almost USD 345,000 for promotion (UAH 9.7 mln). Daily costs for political ads were indicative, too. On average, almost a thousand of pages spent daily USD 4,370 for political ads.

Most of the money account for the party pages. In two weeks, a hundred and fifty pages of various political forces spent on Facebook ads over USD 186,000.