Early in poll cycle, BJP secures an edge via Meta's surrogate ads

TAKING THE PATH OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS

- SOUMYARENDRA BARIK

BETWEEN MARCH 17 and March 23,the first week after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced poll dates for the Lok Sabha elections, a string of advertisers on Facebook and Instagram spent more than ₹85 lakh and placed pro-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)ads.Separately, BJP and its units in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, together spent 32 lakh during the week.

Of the top 20 advertisers on Facebook and Instagram during March 17-23, seven accounts ran ads favourable to the BJP no other account in the top 20 spenders ran surrogate ads for any other political party - an analysis of Meta's ads library by The Indian Express showed.

The top 20 advertisers cumulatively spent ₹1.38 crore during the week. Apart from those placing surrogate ads for the ruling party, the BJP itself spent more than ₹23 lakh (Number 4 in the top 20 list) to run its promotions; the party's state units in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, ran ads worth over ₹9 lakh.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) was the sixth highest political advertiser having spent more than ₹14 lakh across two pages, and the Congress came in at number 13, spending a little over 5 lakh to run ads from Rahul Gandhi's Facebook page.

Surrogate political advertisers employ a variety of content genres, ranging from memes, cartoon strips, to clips, which are edited at times to convey information that may be misleading.

The top surrogate advertisers made no disclosures on their owners linked to the party they promoted. Calls made to the telephone numbers mentioned on their Facebook pages did not yield a response.

Collectively, these advertisements garnered millions of eyeballs across Meta platforms, and despite some of these advertisements carrying communal undertones, Meta let them pass.