Climate Monitor: April 22nd
New ads from Exxon and about Line 3, posts about Daunte Wright, and more
Welcome to Climate Monitor, your weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups like yours are deploying online to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook and Google by over a dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media.
Here’s what we found:
Top ad spenders: Exxon Mobil, API, Potential Energy, Friends of the Earth, and EDF Action
Below are the top 25 spenders on climate-related Facebook ads last week. You can read more here to see some of the ads by these groups.
Top social media posts: Police violence, Interior moves, and National Lineworker Appreciation Day
We suspect that one of the reasons why Exxon and API feel compelled to spend so much on Facebook ads is because climate action groups have significantly larger audiences on organic social media. We explored this dynamic in this week’s monitoring of both camps’ success - or lack thereof - on Facebook and Instagram.
Note how the top posts on both platforms last week came from climate groups. You can read more about it here.
Here are the top five posts from climate groups on Facebook and the # of interactions each post got:
Here are the top five posts from climate groups on Instagram and the # of interactions each post got:
Exxon spent over $85k on Facebook ads last week
Exxon is spending tens of thousands of dollars on a few campaigns at once. While trying to shift public opinion against the Biden Administration’s recent efforts to bolster environmental regulations, they’re also trying to greenwash fossil fuels themselves.
Below is a taste of some of their new ads we found, and you can read more here.
New digital ads launch in Line 3 pipeline fight
Two groups, the Minnesota Ag-Energy Alliance and Minnesotans for Line 3, have spent close to $30k on Facebook ads targeting Minnesotans that argue in favor of the new pipeline. You can read more about these ads here.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, log in to climatemonitor.substack.com to see these updates in real time throughout the week!