Having looked at YouTube activity over the weekend, I was keen to dig into what was the civil society organisations (CSOs) we are following were doing on other social media. The META Ad Library publishes information about pages that pay for advertising about ‘social issues, elections or politics’. It’s not the most open or transparent system (e.g. you have to use their preset date ranges rather than your own) but I was able to access the advertising spend in Australia for Week 1 of the campaign – March 28 to April 3.
I did a little work on the data, excluding any pages that had spent under $1000 in the week, as well as those which ran ‘without a disclaimer’, which were mainly those small ones anyway. After some categorisation of the organisations in types, this left:
Table 1. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – All Organisations
| Organisation Type | Total Pages | Total Spend | Spend / page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parties, MPs and Candidates | 206 | $959,863 | $4,660 |
| Civil Society Organisations | 74 | $771,085 | $10,328 |
| Government Orgs (inc. AEC) | 13 | $190,861 | $14,682 |
| Businesses | 13 | $71,965 | $5,536 |
| Media Organisations | 6 | $12,116 | $2,019 |
| 312 | $2,005,863 | $6,429 |
It’s worth observing here that some organisations run multiple pages (this is certainly true within the Parties, MPs and Candidates category). Within the CSO category there are three significant ones:
- Advance Australia, who ran ads via pages called Advance Australia, Election News, Greens Truth and Her Truth.
- Climate 200, who advertised via Climate 200, Independent News and Liberals for Independents.
- Climate Action Network Australia (CANA), who are responsible for Solutions for Australia and Energy for Australia (though i found this out via a tipoff and their websites rather than Facebook).
Table 2. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – CSO Big Spenders
| Organisation | Wk 1 Spend | Wk 1 Daily |
|---|---|---|
| Advance (4 pages) | $152,014 | $27,716 |
| Climate 200 (3 pages)* | $127,464 | $18,851 |
| Climate Action Network Australia (2 pages) | $80,044 | $11,375 |
* does not include local campaign / candidate spend.
I’ve been debating (with myself and others) whether Climate 200 are actually a political party, given that their focus is primarily on electing particular candidates. Then again, the same could be said for ALP-affiliated unions, and even Advance, so I’ve kept them in. I have excluded however the money being spend by Climate 200-backed independents (who are in the Parties, MPs and Candidates category) as not all of that spend will be from Climate 200.
Promote your preferred media outlet: First image from anti-teal Australians for Prosperity and second from Climate 200.
Now, things get more interesting when we start looking at the four main “Big 4” CSOs we are following in this research: Advance Australia, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU, who go by Australian Unions within the Metaverse), and GetUp!,
Table 3. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – Big 4 CSOs
| Organisation | Wk 1 Total | Week 1 Daily |
|---|---|---|
| Advance (4 pages) | $152,014 | $21,716 |
| ACTU (Australian Unions) | $30,459 | $4,251 |
| GetUp! | $423 | $60.4 |
| Australian Christian Lobby | $0 | $0 |
Yes, that’s right, the doyen of digital campaigning in Australia, GetUp!, spent only $423 on paid advertising via META in the first week of the campaign. This didn’t mean they were inactive. But it does mean they weren’t getting the sweet sweet views that come with the geo-targeted advertisements.
As I mentioned the other day, the ACL have launched an ‘electoral information’ website, with an online event coming this Tuesday, so maybe we’ll see some further action from them.
I also categorised the CSOs into further types: interest groups, International NGOs (INGOs), Unions, and Service Providers.
Table 4. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – CSOs by Type
| CSO Type | Total Pages | Wk 1 Spend | Spend / page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interest Groups | 50 | $597,882 | $11,958 |
| International NGOs | 14 | $106,366 | $7,598 |
| Unions | 8 | $63,516 | $7,840 |
| Service Providers | 2 | $3,294 | $1,647 |
| 74 | $771,058 | $10,420 |
It’s the interest groups and the unions that largely appear to be doing election related activity, with the ACTU accounting for around half of union spending this first week. The ETU also spent around $1505 a day, so that’s not insignificant either. The advertisements of the two service providers, National Zakat Foundation and Vinnies NSW, appeared to have nothing to do with politics. The INGOs were split between disaster relief fundraising organisations (like Action Aid) and more issue-advocacy organisations (like Greenpeace and Amnesty International Australia.
Table 5. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – Big Spending INGOs
| INGO | Wk 1 Spend | Wk 1 spend / day |
|---|---|---|
| UNICEF (Aus) | $24,606 | $3,515 |
| Greenpeace Asia Pacific | $22,493 | $3,213 |
| Doctors without Borders (Aus) | $12,443 | $1,778 |
| World Wildlife Fund (Aus) | $10,035 | $1,434 |
There’s probably a whole different research project about how much money INGOs spend advertising on social media. Given that Greenpeace seems disinterested in the election outcome (at least from the emails and YouTube observations I’ve made so far). They could conceivably by transferring upwards of $1.2 million a year from their donors to META in order to… get more donors?
Climate Campaigning
There was a good story in Crikey last week speculating about why neither of the major parties was talking about climate during the campaign. Even when the ALP talked about renewable energy, they talked about it in the context of cost-of-living and energy prices, rather than as a response to the climate crisis.
My general theory here is that the main ‘other’ challengers to the major parties are both climate-related (the Greens for the ALP, and the Climate 200 Independents for the LNP), and so talking about the climate crisis would given them increased oxygen in the election campaign – something neither of them would want to do.
Anyway, in our research we’re keeping an eye on the climate debate – and this is certainly where the interest group action is, particularly on the progressive (i.e. broadly anti-nuclear / pro-increased action on climate).
Table 6. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – CSOs Contesting Climate
| Political Orientation | Total pages | Wk 1 spend | Spend / page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Progressive (anti-nuclear) | 30 | $404,384 | $13,479 |
| Conservative (pro-nuclear) | 6 | $34,002 | $4,250 |
| 36 | $438,386 | $12,177 |
The progressive organisations here include ones focussing on renewable energy and also nature conservation, but not necessarily those focussing primarily on animals. That is, this doesn’t include the World Wildlife Fund but it does include the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF). Here are the CSOs in that list which spent over $1000 a day in Week 1 of the campaign.
Table 7. META Ad Spending 28/3 to 3/4 – Climate-focussed Big Spenders
| CSO | Politics | Wk 1 spend | spend / day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Climate 200 (3pp) | Progressive | $127,464 | $18,851 |
| CANA (2pp) | Progressive | $80,044 | $11,375 |
| Liberals Against Nuclear* | Progressive | $25,933 | $3,705 |
| Greenpeace Australia Pacific | Progressive | $22,493 | $3,213 |
| ACF | Progressive | $17,393 | $2,485 |
| Clean Energy Council | Progressive | $15,955 | $2,279 |
| Parents for Climate | Progressive | $12,483 | $1,783 |
| Nuclear for Australia | Conservative | $11,804 | $1,686 |
| The Climate Council | Progressive | $10,579 | $1,511 |
| Renew Australia for All | Progressive | $10,131 | $1,447 |
| RE-ALLIANCE | Progressive | $9,971 | $1,424 |
| Farmers for Climate Action | Progressive | $7,704 | $1,101 |
*Liberals Against Nuclear are necessarily ‘progressive’, but they are definitely anti-nuclear.
Honourable Mention:
My favourite CSO campaign that I discovered in this data is one called Keep the Sheep. They’re a WA-based organisation who are opposed to the ban on live exports of sheep, and are campaigning on a “Put Labor Last” platform. They spent $4,873 in Week 1 of the campaign, close to $100 a day.
Wherefore GetUp!?
Based on this data, as well as that collected from YouTube over the weekend, GetUp! appear to have ceded some of the digital space that they might otherwise have been expected to dominate. At least in Week 1 of the campaign. I’m curious to know how GetUp! supporters (i.e. the people who given them money) feel about this. In terms of emails to supporters, GetUp! have sent four so far in the campaign, two of which have been soliciting donations.
The most recent of these asked supporters to “chip in $12 to print and distribute thousands of independent, issue-based How to Vote cards in key seats across the country”. This will bear interesting watching in itself. As I understand it, there is a crossover in volunteer labour between the Climate 200 backed Independents and GetUp!. Perhaps they’ll be going down the direct mail route rather than asking volunteers to staff polling booths.
We are… kinda sepia activists? GetUp!’s Facebook banner at time of writing.
Of course, as I often tell my students, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” GetUp! could be collaborating with some of the climate-oriented CSOs around digital advertising, and strategic decisions were made for the organisation to not be so prominent digitally in the opening weeks of the campaign. And there has been evidence over recent years of GetUp! looking to use its resources to play more of a supportive than a front-line role in electoral and issue campaigns.
Given their origins though as Australia’s preeminent digital campaigning organisation, it’s an interesting shift. I guess that mantle belongs to Advance now…
Leave a Reply