Amid election season, the ruling party BJP is all set to invest big bucks for a nationwide campaign and Facebook is already witnessing huge cash being poured in for political spending.
As per the social media platform, in the month of February, BJP along with its affiliates spent 50 per cent of the total campaigning spending, while Congress and its allies stood third, after regional parties.
The affiliates in these figures include ministers, MPs, MLAs as well as organisational leaders and outfits which stand to back a particular party and fan pages on Facebook.
The leaders of the BJP who are actively involved in election campaigning informed that the party will spend 20-25 per cent of its total campaigning spending on social media. BJP shelled out a whopping INR 2.37 crore on Facebook for Facebook ads while regional parties spent a combined of INR 19.8 lakh and Congress and its affiliates shelled out INR 10.6 lakh.
Some of the biggest spenders from regional parties included National Congress Party, Biju Janta Dal, Telugu Desam Party, Shiv Sena and YSR Congress.
“These social media advertising spends are just a curtain-raiser. The fact is that there is a marketing juggernaut in the DNA of BJP. They believe in brand building and social media,” says Harish Bijoor, Brand Consultant.
“BJP’s spend is on expected lines. They are carpet-bombing the media,” says Karthik Srinivasan, communications consultant and former national lead, social, at Ogilvy.
“When it comes to transparency on political spending, we can look at who has published the advertisement, but do we know who is bankrolling these advertisers? Unless that is clear, it sounds only good on paper,” added Srinivasan.
