Political parties spent less than 1% of their General Election budget on Google and FB

India much awaited and celebrated general election is well past behind us. This year election was termed to be fought as much on the ground as on digital and social media like Facebook and Google. Political parties were expected to spend heavily on digital media.

Contrary to this, as per the latest social media ads figure, Indian political parties spent very tiny share (not even 1 %) of the overall political ads spending on digital platforms.

Till a day before election results, political parties spent about Rs 27.8 crore on FB advertisement and Rs 27.4 crore on Google advertisement. From Feb to June, FB and Google spent around Rs 28.5 crore and Rs 29.3 crore respectively.

However, according to Centre for Media Studies estimates, the digital share is peanuts in compare to elections spend, around 60K crore, by political parties in 2019.

The political ads spending in India also pale in front of international political spending.

In US midterm polls, political spending by parties were $5.7 billion (Approx. Rs 40K crore). Political parties spent around 6% of overall spend on Google (Rs 626 Crore)and FB (Rs 1976 crore), according to the Centre for Responsive Politics cited by BS report.

In the UK, digital ads spending was 10.5 % of total political spends.

In the last couple of years, the social networking sites have emerged as platforms for political parties to reach to a digital voter base.

In India, according to Comscore, Google Sites had a reach of 96% and Facebook’s reach was over 91%.