As the latest advertising reports show, in the three months running up to the European elections, the total amount spent on political advertisements on Facebook was approximately 23.5 million euro. Advertisers in Germany spent the most (3.5 million), followed by those in the UK (3.3 million), Spain (2.7 million), Belgium (2.4 million) and Italy (1.8 million).
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Moreover, member states show distinct approaches from party to party. Two Spanish parties were respectively first and third for spending, leftist Podemos with 751,344 euro spent, and centrist party Ciudadanos with 364,595 euro spent. Flemish far-right party Vlaams Belang comes second with 707,737 euro. Nevertheless, only 3 percent of advertisers invested over 10,000 euro.
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It's worth mentioning that the major spender in Facebook political advertising is not a political party, but the European Parliament itself. Together with a few civil society organisations, such as Kialo, The Good Lobby and Avaaz, the Parliament promoted several get-out-to-vote campaigns to increase public awareness of the elections.
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During the campaign, there were issues with third countries and unidentified organisations sponsoring targeted content. As a result of Facebook's new rules for political advertising in the EU, paid political content is only allowed in the country where the ad buyer is based. Nevertheless, ["]influencers["] could still buy political ads at the national level and reach all European users.