Climate Monitor: October 21st
Spending supporting BBB has almost entirely dropped off as Exxon kicks off huge pro-fossil fuels Facebook ad campaign
Welcome to Climate Monitor, your weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups are deploying online to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Google by several dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
Here’s what we found:
Weekly Build Back Better Climate Update:
Here’s a breakdown of climate-related ad spending to support the Build Back Better plans in Congress. Overall, spending by pro-BBB groups continued to decline week over week.
While League of Conservation Voters and NRDC Action Fund led Facebook ad spending among these groups last week, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund began running new ads advocating for climate action - more on that below.
We’re also seeing a significant decrease in spending on Google + YouTube ads by groups that have been advocating for the Build Back Better Agenda. The League of Conservation Voters, which had been spending hundreds of thousands on the platform each week, spent just shy of $20,000 last week.
For a full picture of pro- and anti-BBB spending not necessarily related to climate, view our public tracker here >>.
More Digital Advertising Data 📈
Facebook + Instagram
Most large climate, clean energy, and conservation groups appear to have committed to a smaller level of investment in Facebook ads after a huge weeks-long push, but last week ExxonMobil launched the biggest campaign on the platform that we’ve ever seen from them. As a result, polluters outspent climate groups for the first time since we started tracking this data in June.
Here are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related ads on Facebook from last week:
The EDF and Climate Power - while they aren’t spending as much on Facebook ads as they used to - have started running new, smaller campaigns focused on connecting environmental disasters to public health and necessary climate action. EDF has started running ads nationwide about the wildfires that have consumed so much of the western U.S., specifically in Oregon where they’re pushing for a robust Climate Protection Program. They’re also running a series of ads targeting PA, KS, KY, OH, NY, TX, OK, LA, NM, WV, and IL that use data visualization to show their target audiences how many orphan oil wells are in their state and where. These are mostly targeted at young women in each state.
Similarly, Climate Power, through their Climate Power Education Fund page, is now running video ads stating that “Extreme weather has thrown America into a constant state of emergency. We need to act now to fight climate change. Later will be too late.” While these ads seek to highlight the scale of the emergency - and by extension, the required scale of any solution - other video ads from the group argue that the “American auto worker can build America's clean energy future and tackle climate change if we invest in tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles.”
Now, let’s take a look at how ExxonMobil has been spending all that money on Facebook recently. We’ve identified a few campaigns that they seem to have launched at around the same time:
Ads in New York advocating against a natural gas ban in order to “protect New York’s energy future”, in part by leaning on leaning on folks’ preference for gas stoves;
Nationwide acquisition ads that push an “American Energy Poll” and argue that “Affordable energy depends on American oil and gas production”;
Ads advocating for oil and gas pipelines that urge folks to “protect American jobs and affordable energy by standing up for critical infrastructure”;
And GOTV ads targeting Virginia and New Jersey. These ads were mostly targeted at older residents in each state. We have no way of knowing for sure, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Exxon used lookalike or other custom targeting to try to mobilize voters (e.g. Republicans) who are more sympathetic to fossil fuels in order to elect lawmakers (e.g. Youngkin, Ciattarelli, et al.) who would be more favorable to the industry.
We’d also like to note that we found a few new ads from right-wing propaganda group PragerU that argue against ESG investing and blame wind and solar energy in the state for the deaths that occurred during the winter storm in Texas this past February.
Click here for more data on the latest ads.
Google + YouTube
On Google and Youtube, the League of Conservation voters continued to run ads advocating for electric school buses and propping up a variety of Democratic lawmakers, but at a fraction of the scale - last week, they spent just $19,400 on the platform, compared to the $205,400 the previous week.
Also on Google, Friends of the Earth is running a YouTube ad targeting Washington, D.C., criticizing the Biden administration for continuing to approve fossil fuel extractions on public lands despite his campaign pledges to do the opposite. It appears that they’ve spent $2,900 on this ad so far.
Snapchat
While Patagonia is continuing to run new organizing ads on Snapchat every week - most recently in partnership with the Surfrider Foundation advocating for a national offshore drilling ban, Clean Virginia Fund is running new ads on the platform for the first time since the Virginia Democratic primary for governor this summer. Their new ads argue against a rate increase by Dominion and lead to this action page.
Overall, here are the top spenders on climate ads on Snapchat so far this year:
Who’s Driving the Online Conversation on Climate change?
The top 3 performing posts mentioning climate or energy issues on Facebook last week came from Bloomberg Opinion (46.2k interactions), Reuters (44.3k), and Vanity Fair (28.4k interactions).
In a relatively rare turn of events, several of the top posts across Facebook and Twitter concerned news outside the United States, likely due to Americans’ unique interest in the British royal family and general antipathy toward Chinese economic dominance. The above statement from Prince William generated relatively high levels of engagement on both platforms for the outlets that reported on it, including Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, and NowThis. Additionally, a Bloomberg post about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle participating in sustainable investing generated engagement, as did reported behind-the-scenes comments from Queen Elizabeth II about the upcoming COP26.
We suspect that the top two Facebook posts about climate change and clean energy did well because they generated a relatively high level of sinophobic hate-clicks, a trend that Bloomberg Opinion appeared content to ride to social media success. Two of the top three stories about climate change and clean energy came from them, with headlines reading: “China Only Has the Energy For One Crisis at a Time” (52.1k interactions) and “China’s Power Crisis Will Affect Industries Worldwide” (49.6k interactions).
We also noticed - and you may have as well - that the latest iteration of Superman generated a fair amount of controversy (read: engagement). An Instagram post from The Guardian about the iconic superhero’s new identity got 31.6k interactions, and a leftist tweet expressing disgust at the character’s portrayed peaceful activism was the most-engaged tweet about climate change last week.
A different story with global appeal from The Guardian that illustrated major cities drowning in risen sea levels also went relatively viral last week. The story itself got 70k interactions across Facebook and Twitter, making it the most-engaged article about climate change last week, and their Instagram post of the story got 83.9k interactions.
Overall, here were the top three most engaged posts on Instagram mentioning climate or energy issues last week:
Finally, here were the top three tweets mentioning climate and related terms last week. Like the above two platforms, some of the most-engaged content came from accounts that are openly antagonistic toward Democrats’ current handling of climate policy. The most-engaged tweet from a Democrat last week came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which got 34.7k interactions.
BONUS: The online reach of #PeopleVsFossilFuels
Last week, hundreds of climate and Native activists marched on the White House to demand that the Biden administration take a more aggressive approach to climate action than it has been in recent months. These protestors leaned on social and earned media to get the word out about their activism, but we found that the online reach of their actions was limited.
We found that in the past month (Sep. 20 - Oct. 21), public Facebook posts mentioning #PeopleVsFossilFuels and related terms only received 59,125 interactions, according to data collected from NewsWhip. To put that into context, the most-engaged post about Build Back Better from the past month, from Breitbart, got 102.7k interactions. The top Facebook post about last week’s protests actually came from The Washington Post, which got 8.6k interactions.
You can read more about the top-performing content around these protests - including a relatively highly-engaged but predictably stilted piece from right-wing media - here.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, head to climatemonitor.substack.com to see these updates in real time as we publish them throughout the week!
And if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to ClimateMonitor@DCC.org.