Both leading parties have taken vastly different approaches at a granular level in how they woo voters on social media and other digital channels. This is confirmed by an analysis of ad spend data released by Meta (which runs social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet-owned Google (which runs YouTube and Google Search).
While both leverage the various features that Meta and Google offer to science-focused audiences, the BJP does much more micro-targeting with its political ads than the Congress, our analysis shows.
For this piece, we looked at data between March 16, when the election manifesto was announced, and April 23. This period includes direct advertising spend of up to ₹50 crore by both parties. The platforms allow targeting at different points. For example, Meta lets an advertiser specify to whom (age and gender), where (state), and how many, how often ('impressions') and up to what spending limit he wants an ad to be shown.
Each permutation and combination of such features generates a unique advertising ID, and this is where the BJP is more active. According to our analysis, at the highest levels of both payment and usage, the Congress would have spent 25% and 34% less than the BJP on placing ads directly on Google and Meta respectively. But the BJP had 32 to 35 times more unique advertising IDs than the Congress. As a result, average spending per ad ID would be about 5% of Congress's. In other words, the BJP is doing a lot more micro-targeting than the Congress.
Degrees of selections
In today's digital age, where user data is easily captured and made available to advertisers, digital platforms can enable formidable targeting. For example, a BJP advertisement published on Meta in Hindi in Dadra and Nagar Haveli on April 23 targeted 14 types of demographic combinations, all classified on the basis of age and gender. It defined that 33% of the people who see the ad must be male users between the ages of 18 and 24, and 14% must be female users between the ages of 18 and 24. There were another twelve such combinations of age and gender, with a proportion between 0.0794% and 8%, which together amounted to 100%.
The Congress does the same with its advertisements, but it divides its audience in far fewer ways than the BJP. Take for example Kerala, which voted on April 26. During the analysis period, the BJP posted 1,700 advertisement IDs on Meta that specified Kerala as a region where these advertisements should be shown to some extent. It set an upper limit of 368 million impressions (how often an ad is shown). By comparison, Congress published 57 such ad IDs for 6.1 million impressions.
The amount paid by an advertiser depends, among other things, on the demographic target group (gender, education, age, etc.) and location. On Meta, the BJP has a lower unit rate (per ad IT) than the Congress.
There are even more differences on Meta. Congress has always leveraged every unique advertising ID on both Facebook and Instagram. In comparison, the BJP campaigned only on Facebook or only on Instagram. But the big difference between the two parties, which still exists, is scale. On Meta, ads placed by the BJP during this period had an upper limit of 1.3 billion impressions, compared to the Congress's 120 million, or about a tenth of the BJP.
Video about images
In addition to the digital ad selection strategy, this variance is also driven by the extent to which the BJP has cornered political financing over the past decade. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, a civil society organization, the BJP reported a total income of ₹2,361 crore in 2022-2023. Congress, for comparison, reported a total income of ₹452 crore that year – about 19% of the BJP's. Similarly, the BJP received about half of the electoral bonds issued before they were struck down by the Supreme Court in March.
However, when it comes to ad spend on Google, the difference is smaller. During our analysis period, the BJP has defined an upper limit for ad impressions of 2.85 billion on Google, compared to 1.32 billion for the Congress. In other words, while the BJP bought an estimated 11 times more impressions than the Congress on Meta, the ratio on Google was about twice as high.
One of the big shifts happening in this Lok Sabha election is the increased importance of the video format, compared to messaging through static images. Since the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the cost of purchasing a smartphone has dropped significantly, while internet access via mobile phones has become even more mainstream post-pandemic. As a result, 70% of the BJP's estimated ad spend and 79% of the Congress' ad spend on Google went on videos. This is an increase from 2019 for both parties, especially the BJP.
The Congress almost matches the BJP in video impressions on Google, targeting an estimated 1.02 billion impressions compared to the BJP's 1.19 billion. In images, however, the difference is stark: Congress has 307 million impressions, compared to the BJP's 1.65 billion. An important reason for this mismatch is the electoral battle of the respective political parties, which means that even a party with fewer resources such as Congress has to compete.
www.howindialives.com is a database and search engine for public data.