Rs 30 Crore In 30 Days, BJP Spends On Google Ads Ahead Of Elections: Report (Image-twitter/narendramodi)
A recent investigative survey conducted by the News Minute and Newslaundry has revealed the BJP’s spending ahead of the Lok Sabha election. The BJP in its strategical move to sweep the votes, has blitzed the internet with thousands of political ads across Google’s Display Network and Alphabet platforms, including Google Search and YouTube. The bulk of the Google ads are mostly to target the north Indian states ruled by the BJP or its alliance.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the BJP has spent more than double what it has splurged during the four months from February to May 2019. But unfortunately, google has taken down the video ads for violation of platform policy.
During the 2019 elections, the saffron party has only spent Rs 12.3 crore. Meanwhile, the party has spent Rs 29.7 crore in 30 days, streaming 12,600 ads, says Google Ads Transparency Center. These videos streamed are of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union government schemes in multiple languages.
At the same time, the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress in the same period has only spent Rs 2.99 crore. And the party does not have any messaging via Google ads in February.
The recent spending of the saffron party shows the growth of online political advertisements in India. Since 2019, the BJP so far has invested Rs 79.16 crore to spread its messages through more than 52,000 ads. Just for Facebook ads, the party has spent Rs 33 crore between February 2019 and February 2023, according to a recent Business Line report.
As per the statistics given out by the report, BJP has spent Rs 30 lakh for one video in the past 30 days. The BJP ran 50 videos with a spend of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 30 lakh, 100 videos with a spend of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, 124 videos with a spend of Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, and 109 videos with a spend of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh.
Meanwhile, by looking at south Indian states, the BJP has tightened its strings when it came to South Indian states, excluding Karnataka as they do not have much hope of winning any seats.
The 2019 data shows that Karnataka (Rs 8.9 crore) tops the list of states in which the BJP has spent more money on Google ads. It is then followed by Uttar Pradesh, then Delhi.
However, as per the Compendium of Instructions issued by the Election Commission of India, the Model of Conduct and instructions apply to content posted online by candidates and political parties. But the Google Ads Transparency has shown that the BJP is targeting voters with political ads.
This has been a similar trend followed by the party since 2019. The election which was held in seven phases, held from April 11 to May 19, the voter was targeted continuously with political ads from April 6 to May 17, says Ads Transparency Center data.
In 2022, during the assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, held during February 10 to March 7, BJP target until March 4. And they began their advertising in October 2021.
However, it is unclear why these videos were removed by Google as they do not disclose the reason and stated that they have been removed for a policy violation. The search engine also does not allow the user to view the deleted videos.
