 "BJP accounted for over 80% of election advertisements on Google: Report")
The ruling party dominated the digital advertisements on the world’s most popular search engine and its associated platforms in the election season.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accounted for 12,002 advertisements since February, or over 80 per cent of the total advertisements shown on Google and its platforms like YouTube. They also accounted for the majority of the money spent on the platform, shows data disclosed by Google.
Google’s Transparency Report shows that the BJP accounted for Rs 17.1 crore or 62.5 per cent of the overall advertising spends on elections. Parties spent Rs 27.4 crore since February on Google. The total number of advertisements are 14,837. Others in the top five list include the DMK, the Congress, and the YSR Congress. Auburn Digital Solutions Private Limited is fifth on the list. It seemed to be promoting advertisements on TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu as well as AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
Similar figures are also available for Facebook, where the biggest spending pages largely belonged to the BJP. Its own page ran 2,649 advertisements worth Rs 4.3 crore. The Congress was second on the list. It spent Rs 1.8 crore. All the rest of the top-five list seemed to support the BJP or Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The total spends on Facebook since February 2019 was Rs 27.8 crore.
The total number of advertisements was 124,502. The top search term on Facebook in the last week was ‘BJP’. The ‘Indian National Congress’ was third; while ‘Congress’ was fifth. The only regional party whose spends made it to the top-ten list was Odisha’s Janata Dal (BJD). A page on party chief Naveen Patnaik spent Rs.56.4 lakh on 215 advertisements, according to Facebook’s consolidated figures for the page.
The final figures for spending on Facebook and Google advertisements show that there were a total of 139,339 advertisements across the world's biggest social media platform and its biggest search engine platform during the Indian elections. The total spends were Rs 55.1 crore.
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