Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minster Amit Shah look at a mobile phone.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spent at least Rs 41 crore on political advertisements through Google since the Model Code of Conduct came into place, followed by the Congress which has spent Rs 30 crores in the same period, according to statistics from Google’s Ads Transparency Center.
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat were the top four targeted states in terms of ad spending, with BJP alone spending 35 per cent of the Rs 116 crore that was spent on political ads between March 16 and May 7, as per Google’s insights.
The Congress accounted for 26 per cent of the total spent; the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party with Rs 8.61 crore accounted for 7 per cent. In the same period, the Telugu Desam Party spent Rs 4 crore and the Biju Janata Dal spent Rs 3.9 crore.
Following Tamil Nadu, other states where most of the ad spend was recorded are Andhra Pradesh (₹16.2 crore), Maharashtra (₹9.87 crore), Gujarat (₹6.87 crore), and Uttar Pradesh (₹6.52 crore).
With Rs 6.09 crore being spent on April 26, it accounted for the most amount of money spent on political ads on that day while May 7 accounted for the lowest with 40.6 lakh. In all, 1,60,701 ads have been placed in this time.
Last month, the BJP became the first political party to cross a spend of Rs 100 crore on political advertisements through Google since May 2018, when Google had made its political ads transparent.
In Facebook, the BJP has spent over Rs 50 crore in the last month through several of its affiliates, as per data from the Meta Ad Library. In the same time, the Congress and its affiliated pages spent Rs 7.17 crore.
Till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, spend on Facebook rivalled that of the search giant Google. But with a change in content policy, spend on the social media site has lagged behind; in its 2022 Widely Viewed Content Report, political-related content was no longer in its most shared and viewed content lists.
Despite tighter norms and a ban of sale on accounts, Facebook has been shown to be a thriving black market for fake and stolen accounts. A study released by the Tech Transparency Report on Monday showed that it found multiple Facebook users selling accounts they said are authorised to advertise on politics and election issues in India.