Surrogate advertising sees rapid growth across social media this election

The ruling BJP was the top spender on Meta platforms last month, which expended Rs 9.42 crore in online advertising to run 29,291 ads across the country

As India's Lok Sabha elections heat up, the social media landscape is flooded with political advertising. Interestingly, other than the official party pages that are pouring significant funds into their campaigns, a notable wave of affiliated advertisers is also making substantial ad buys, indirectly supporting political parties.

The latest monthly advertising data from 5th April to 4th May, 2024, available on Meta ad library portal, points towards a significant presence of surrogate pages labelled as ‘digital creator’ that are advertising indirectly for political parties.

A page registered with the name – ‘Phir ek baar Modi sarkar’ – for example, was placed at sixth position amongst the top 10 spenders for the month. 

Similarly, another page, titled ‘Meme Hub’, spent a sum of Rs 72 lakh in the period and stood seventh in terms of spending.

A closer look at the advertisements run by these pages hinted towards its affiliation with a single political party.

All three pages – Meme Hub, Phir ek baar Modi sarkar, and Mahathugbandhan – were in the list of top 10 spenders during the election month and collectively spent Rs 2.30 crore from 5th April to 4th May, 2024, on surrogate advertising on Meta platforms. 

What is surrogate advertising?

Surrogate advertising is a common advertising technique in the advertising industry. In political terms, it involves promoting a political agenda indirectly through related but ostensibly non-political activities like paid news among others.

Earlier this year, the Election Commission of India also instructed the political parties that existing laws be strictly enforced to prevent 'Paid News' and surrogate advertisements in print and electronic media during elections.

The online advertising medium extends the reach of political advertisers to over 600 million Indians, according to Statista – a reason why Indian political parties rush to advertise on social media platforms. 

According to Meta’s advertising data, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the top spender last month where it spent around Rs 9.42 crore in online advertising to run 29,291 ads across the country, on Meta platforms. 

The official page of Indian National Congress (INC) stood second in terms of spending during the election month, with the party shelling out Rs 6.9 crore for promoting itself online over major social media platforms. 

Political parties quadrupled their ad spending in April, 2024 compared to the same period in 2019, according to details from Google.

The Indian political parties spent more than Rs 78 crore on online advertising over Google platforms, in the month of April this year, which saw two phases of voting taking place across the country. The amount is approximately four times of the total political advertising spending across the google platforms during the same period in 2019, which stood at Rs 18 crore.

Interestingly, the month of April 2019 witnessed four phases of voting as compared to just two phases that have happened in April this year. 

Spends on Google ads

According to data accessed from Google Ads Transparency Center, the Indian National Congress (INC) topped the list of spending with its ad expense totalling to Rs 26.6 crore in the month of April, 2024. 

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stood close and was ranked 2nd in the list of spending. The party spent Rs 21.3 crore during the month on Google ads.

There was a massive difference in the number of ads run by both the parties though. While Congress ran just 3,494 ads during the month, BJP’s Google ad campaign had a total of 123,342 ads running across different platforms.

In terms of format of advertisements, a majority of 77 per cent of total ads displayed in the month were in video form, while 23 per cent were in image format.