Abstract
Parties have limited opportunities to determine the audiences of their organic communication. However, Facebook offers sophisticated advertising possibilities which enable parties to sponsor their organic messages in order to target them at selected and narrow segments of the electorate. Information on advertising activity was not available in Europe until Facebook has launched its ‘Ad Library’ right before the 2019 European Parliamentary election which provided access to all political ads and its metadata. By drawing on this data, our chapter will advance on the previous country chapters and investigate parties’ advertising activity in the 12 analysed countries with a specific focus on sponsored posts. We find that political advertising makes up a significant part of the parties’ digital activity on Facebook, but there are also large cross-country differences in their advertising strategy. Sponsored posts are applied mainly to informing and mobilising voters, but also to strategically emphasise specific issues such as environment and immigration.
The research has been supported by the Incubator Program of the Center for Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (project number: 03013645). Additionally, Márton Bene is a recipient of the Bolyai János Research Fellowship awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (BO/334_20).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Political advertisers can run A/B-tests for different versions of ads, placements, target groups and delivery-optimisation strategies. With running statistical analyses, specific ads can be tested against each other to learn which versions perform better and to adjust them accordingly.
- 2.
- 3.
As the election day is not the same in each country, there are variations in the specific timeframe we covered (see Chap. 3).
- 4.
In the Ad Library the price is reported in the currency it was paid. We converted the prices of each ad into EUR based on the exchange rate of the European Central Bank on 24 May.
References
Andreou, A., Venkatadri, G., Goga, O., Gummadi, K. P., Loiseau, P., & Mislove, A. (2018). Investigating ad transparency mechanisms in social media: A case study of Facebook’s explanations. NDSS 2018 - Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2018.23204
Anstead, N. (2017). Data-driven campaigning in the 2015 United Kingdom general election. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 22(3), 294–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161217706163
de Vreese, C. H., Lauf, E., & Peter, J. (2007). The media and European Parliament elections: Second-rate coverage of a second-order event? In W. van der Brug & C. van der Eijk (Eds.), European elections and domestic politics: Lessons from the past and scenarios for the future (pp. 116–130). University of Notre Dame Press.
Dobber, T., Fathaigh, R. Ó., & Borgesius, F. J. Z. (2019). The regulation of online political micro-targeting in Europe. Internet Policy Review, 8(4) https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/regulation-online-political-micro-targeting-europe
Dommett, K., & Temple, L. (2018). Digital campaigning: The rise of facebook and satellite campaigns. Parliamentary Affairs, 71(suppl_1), 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsx056
European Commission. (2013). Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). Shaping Europe’s Digital Future. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/audiovisual-media-services
Fisher, C., Culloty, E., Lee, J. Y., & Park, S. (2019). Regaining control citizens who follow politicians on social media and their perceptions of journalism. Digital Journalism, 7(2), 230–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1519375
Holtz-Bacha C., Novelli E., & Rafter, K. (2017). Political Advertising in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Palgrave Macmillan doi:https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56981-3.
International IDEA. (2020). Political Finance Database. https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/political-finance-database
Kaid, L. L. (2012). Political advertising as political marketing: A retro-forward perspective. Journal of Political Marketing, 11(1–2), 29–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2012.642731
Karpf, D. (2018). Analytic activism and its limitations. Social Media + Society, 4(1), 2056305117750718. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117750718
Kreiss, D., Lawrence, R. G., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). In their own words: Political practitioner accounts of candidates, audiences, affordances, genres, and timing in strategic social media use. Political Communication, 35(1), 8–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334727
Norris, P. (2003). Preaching to the converted? Pluralism, participation and party websites. Party Politics, 9(1), 21–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/135406880391003
Petithomme, M. (2012). Second-order elections, but also ‘low-cost’ campaigns? National parties and campaign spending in European elections: A comparative analysis. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 13(2), 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2012.675650
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bene, M., Kruschinski, S. (2021). Political Advertising on Facebook. In: Haßler, J., Magin, M., Russmann, U., Fenoll, V. (eds) Campaigning on Facebook in the 2019 European Parliament Election. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73851-8_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73851-8_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-73850-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-73851-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)