Role of Political ads on Facebook in winning an election

Elections in Italy are over, and the winners have been announced. Is there anything we can learn from the results?

What’s new

Euronews reporters took a look in Meta open sources to get a clear picture of the ad campaigns of different candidates. According to the Meta Ad Library report, the winners had over 140 000 euros spend in 30 days (August 25th to September 23rd) and the results of those ads are obvious: money well spent.

What was their key to success (from a purely marketing point of view)? If we look carefully at the Location sections of both winners and their opponents, it becomes clear that the main difference, besides the size of the budget, was the targeting. One was going for the urban population and the other targeted Southern regions.

Bigger picture

A strong presence in social media has become an absolute must for anyone who wants to speak to the public. The new prime minister of Italy is also one of the most followed Italian politicians. And she is outrun in the number of followers only by Matteo Salvini, her party member with 5 million followers.

Overall, following different strategies, parties were either investing heavily in advertising their primary candidate or spending their budget only on their party page.

Despite the transparency of Meta reports, Italian officials still asked for additional information from the company officials. All this is happening in light of the recent set of policy updates announced by Meta that will regulate political promotions during the upcoming midterm elections in the US. Also preparing for the US midterms, Google has promised to see to political emails would never go to the Spam folder.

And TikTok, which never allowed political advertising in the first place, now tightens its policy even more. They suggest politicians verify their accounts so TikTok could turn off its advertising features for them, right away. That, in turn, raises the necessity of constant content production and organic growth of the follower pool putting politicians in the same line with influencers and entertainers.