The recently founded Change UK- The Independent Group invested a whole lot of funds in social media ads mostly on Facebook. Sources reported that they spent more than 60,000 pounds which is more than half of their total budget in a duration of just a week between 13th and 19th May. This is said to be their highest investments since their formation in February 2019. Whereas the other parties involved in the Europeans elections 2019, didn’t back up on funding ads. The Brexit party had a total expenditure of nearly 100,000 pounds and that of the Liberal Democrats had 80,000 pounds.
The Change UK led by Heidi Allen is a political party comprises of eleven Members of Parliament (MPs) and one Member of the European Parliament (MEPs). The MPs are the representatives of the House of Commons. These MPs comprises of members that were formerly associated with the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. This party is considered to be a centrist one consisting of only the Pro-European candidates. The party got its registration for the 2019 elections in April 2019 with their ideology based on pro-Europeanism. Their slogan “Politics is broken. Let’s change it” reached the numbers and grew support towards them quite rapidly.
However, events proved that even if you spend more on promotions without putting up with the actual work, the posts won’t be recognized and it won’t reach the appropriate audience. Like for instance, in the 2017 elections the Labour Party spent less on ads than the Conservative Party, but overall, they had a better engagement rate on the site than the Conservatives. In that year, the parties had an overall estimate of nearly 3 million pounds on ads with resources saying that the Conservatives spent twice as much as combined of what the other parties spent. Even though spending so much, they failed to reach their appropriate audience. In the same year too, the Liberal Democrats spent as much as the Labour Party, but still, it failed to reach the amount of audience that the Labour party did.
From these figures, it can be obviously noted that tech-giants such as Facebook and Google have such a huge part to play in the UK elections. But the voters were not fully aware of how the funds were gathered that supported such high-level campaigns.
Apart from this, American elections too involve a whole lot of advertising through social media platforms. Like in the presidential elections held in 2016, the Trump and Clinton campaigns spent nearly 81 million pounds on social media advertisements involving Facebook for the most parts. Even after all of these expenditures, reports say that these figures don’t even come close to what the Political Action Committees (PACs) spend on adverts. This didn’t include any specific figure or stance that the committee supported, but it is highly possible for the committee to outspend any of the candidates or political parties taking part in the elections.
