Political parties spent more than $148,000 on campaign and non-campaign advertising through Meta in the last 90 days.
Australians are guaranteed to head to the polls in the first five months of 2025, but the exact date of the next federal election is yet to be announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
A number of political ads have launched before the election, including the Australian Labor Party’s ‘You’ll be worse off under Dutton’ and the Coalition’s ‘We’ll get Australia back on track’.
Political advertising spend will likely jump in the coming months, with no limits on how much candidates can spend to spread their message.
The current Labor government came to power in 2022 promising to spend significantly less on advertising than the previous regime.
The cuts were part of an overall plan to cut expenses across advertising, travel and legal - then a total of $642.5 million.
Meta’s ad spending tracker revealed that the ALP has spent $68,795 between November 16 and February 13, compared to the Australian Liberal Party which only spent $10,834.
Greens MPs coughed up $43,009 for 197 ads, while the National Party of Australia spent $26,307 on seven.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party and the United Australia Party have not yet spent on advertising through Meta.
Spending in an election year is traditionally higher than no poll years.
According to media agency bookings data, higher government category bookings are a key trend. The government category ad spend was up 67.5% in December.
"This further cements our expectations that stronger government category ad demand will be a key trend in the January quarter as those bookings continue to grow ahead of the expected federal election in May this year,’’ said Guideline SMI APAC managing director Jane Ractliffe.
According to analysis by Nielsen, political parties spent $55,998,000 in the 2022 federal poll.
The table below shows how much the major political parties have spent so far via Meta:
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.