The amount invested by Democrats in ads at Meta was ten times greater than that spent by Donald Trump, according to a report carried out by the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship at Syracuse University.
Between September 2023 and August this year, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spent US$50 million on advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The businessman spent US$5 million.
The substantial difference draws attention after the centrality that Facebook had in the Republican’s campaign in previous elections. From June to November 2016, he invested US$55 million in advertising on the network. In 2020, it was US$106 million in the same period. Both figures were adjusted for inflation.
According to the Syracuse research coordinator, political campaigns and disinformation expert Jennifer Stromer-Galley, it is not clear what led to the businessman’s change in strategy.
The pattern is repeated on Google’s networks (including YouTube) and in TV advertisements, which concentrate the bulk of candidate advertising spending.
Pennsylvania, for example, a priority for both campaigns, was flooded with $280 million in ads from July 22 to October 8, or 21% of all TV advertising spending, according to AdImpact data for Forbes. Of this total, Kamala was responsible for US$159 million – equivalent to 57%.
There is no data from TikTok because the network says it does not allow paid ads for political content.
The only platform on which Trump spends more than the Democrats is X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk – who jumped into the Republican campaign.
According to a survey carried out by the Washington Post in partnership with AdImpact, business support profiles spent US$3 million promoting political content from March to October on X. The amount is small, but still three times the amount spent by Kamala supporters.
The biggest buyer of political ads on the network is Trump’s official account – which remained dormant for months, even after Musk reactivated it when he purchased the platform. Kamala’s campaign did not make a single purchase on the network, according to the American newspaper.
One of the possible explanations is the difference in the amount of money on hand for each campaign. Biden was ahead of Trump for almost the entire period he was a candidate, only being overtaken at the end. With Kamala’s replacement, donations to the Democrats soared, and the Republican fell behind again.
According to data released by the FEC (the federal electoral commission) on Tuesday (15), committees linked to the vice president raised US$870 million between July and September. Those linked to the Republican totaled US$366 million.
Furthermore, Trump has an extra expense: his defense expenses in the various court cases being processed against him.
“Trump has outsourced a lot of his campaign. There’s a lot of coordination with the Republican National Committee. He’s outsourced the field work to Elon Musk and Christian organizations. So he’s not spending money on the field work,” adds Jennifer. “But this difference (in expenses) raises doubts”, he adds.
The project uses Neo4j’s database and graph technology analysis, which allows the identification of actors, networks and behavior patterns. The platform was used, for example, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2015 in the case of the Panama Papers.
Scammers take advantage of elections to make money
The Syracuse research also identified networks of Facebook pages used to buy ads that are, in fact, scams. Together, these profiles spent US$5 million. The two main ones are “Liberty Defender Group” (whose main account was removed by the network) and “Prosperity Prayers”.
One of these ads is a video attacking Kamala and defending Trump, falsely associating immigrants with “terrible crimes.” At the end, the video presenter asks viewers to click on the link to answer a questionnaire and win a Trump campaign flag. The form asks, among other details, for the person’s credit card.
In the fine print, it is explained that the person agrees to the charge of US$79.97 per month to be part of the “American Patriot Club”.
“These scams often start with a snippet and a video of Trump on Fox News, or Eric Trump saying how stupid Harris is, that she’s not fit to be president. And then it switches to a video sometimes with voices generated by artificial intelligence, sometimes by human voices,” says Jennifer. “Then they promise a Make America Great Again hat, for example.”
From a user perspective, one problem is that presidential campaigns, particularly Trump’s, are actually advertising sweepstakes and prizes. In recent weeks, Elon Musk said he would pay R$47 to each person who indicated the contact information of an undecided voter in a swing state.
“They are legitimate, they are not scams, but as the language looks very similar to a scam, I think social media users have difficulty differentiating”, says the expert.
