Climate Monitor: September 16th
Digital ad spending by climate groups continues slow growth as right-wing media undermines Biden admin’s climate messaging at every opportunity
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 over a 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:
Best performing Facebook post from DCC members: The Years Project
Inside the online ad push for climate action in the Build Back Better Agenda
Climate groups and their allies supporting President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda are mostly keeping a steady drumbeat with their digital ad programs, such as the League of Conservation Voters and Potential Energy Coalition’s Science Moms. Other groups, like the NRDC Action Fund and EDF Action, are also maintaining steady budgets but are also cycling in new ads in their campaigns. The NRDC Action Fund has launched a slate of Spanish-language ads targeting New Mexico’s and Colorado’s Democratic senators and Rep. Katie Porter:
El plan “Reconstruir mejor” del presidente Biden realiza inversiones masivas en Nuevo México, desde incentivos de energía solar hasta la limpieza de pozos abandonados. Proporciona miles de millones en capacitación y colocación laboral para invertir en el futuro de nuestra economía.
Meanwhile, EDF Action is supporting a handful of Democratic lawmakers by outlining the benefits of investing in clean energy. One of their new video ads reads:
We can lower utility bills, cut costs for businesses and consumers, make it less expensive to power your car, if Congress makes smart investments in clean energy. Thank you, Susie Lee. For going bold on clean energy and saving Nevada families money.
Overall, here’s a breakdown of how much pro-BBB advertisers spent on Facebook last week:
And, here’s how much these and similar groups spent on political ads on YouTube and Google last week. The biggest new spender here is Climate Power, under the disclaimer “Fund for a Better Future,” which is running YouTube ads criticizing freshman Republicans in the House for ignoring the impacts of climate change in their constituencies. We also found that the NRDC Action Fundis running new YouTube ads supporting Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens of Michigan. For examples of some of the latest ads these groups are running, read on (or click here).
More Digital advertising data 📈
Facebook + Instagram
Before we dig into it, here are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related ads on Facebook from last week:
The Wilderness Society and the Wilderness Society Action Fund have been steadily increasing their spending on Facebook political ads over the past couple of weeks. The group is running similar ads - mostly targeting young adults in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico - across both pages that vaguely call for federal climate action using fear of runaway climate change to drive email sign-ups:
“Nature as we know it is running out of time. Climate change threatens all of us, and we have a narrow opportunity to change course. Tell Congress to act NOW.”
A few other ads appear to be running in Spanglish:
“Esto es climate change. It’s NOT some distant threat – es aquí, es ahora and it’s deadly. Tell Congress to act!”
While they’re running these vague call-to-climate-action ads through both pages, they appear to be more specific through their Action Fund. There, they’re pressuring the Democratic senators from AZ, CO, and NM to protect public lands from fossil fuel development.
On the other side of things, BP is resuming its greenwashing PR tactics with Facebook ads targeting mostly older Americans calling for carbon pricing and methane regulations at the federal level. At the same time, BASF - a German multinational company that’s the largest chemical producer in the world - is now running Facebook ads in the U.S. with rhetoric similar to that of other pro-petrochemical companies and organizations. They claim that innovation in plastic development can solve a whole host of big problems, including climate change, world hunger, and pollution. Notably, they’re also running a series of Instagram-only ads that are almost exclusively targeted at young adults on the platform.
Google + YouTube
The League of Conservation Voters is still spending huge sums on Google + YouTube advertising week-to-week. Last week, they spent $186,800 on the platform, second among ALL spenders on the platform only to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s anti-recall campaign. They’re still running ads supporting various Democratic representatives in Congress and Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema.
One huge new campaign on YouTube last week came from the “Fund for a Better Future,” a.k.a. Climate Power. They spent $88,200 on YouTube ads against seven freshman Republican representatives - Reps. David Valadao, Maria Salazar, Mike Garcia, Young Kim, Michelle Steel, and Carlos Giménez - lambasting them for ignoring how climate change is impacting their constituents. You can check it out here.
Snapchat
There were no new political ad campaigns on Snapchat from climate groups, but we’ll note that Amazon’s Climate Pledge, like on other platforms, is continuing to dump a ton of money here, especially compared to how much other groups tend to spend.
Overall, here are the top spenders on climate ads on Snapchat so far this year:
Who’s driving the online conversation on climate change?
In the past week, President Joe Biden has been hitting the road to advocate for climate action, from the scorched West to the drenched East. Indeed, the top Facebook post mentioning climate change came from former Pres. Barack Obama, who lauded the latest Obama Foundation Scholars (receiving 81.9k interactions), but the next-most engaged post came from Biden on the day he toured a New Jersey community recently ravaged by Hurricane Ida. That post received 79.7k interactions:
However, some residents had a few choice words for him, mostly about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. In response, Republicans and right-wing media alike took the opportunity to turn the screws on the president. Breitbart, Fox News, and Newsmax (with an interview with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel) all ran with it, creating some of the most-engaged content about climate change last week:
Also during the tour, Biden misspoke about his administration’s target for net-zero emissions, which both Western Journal and Breitbart took as an opportunity to undermine the president’s message, and Dan Bongino responded to other remarks from Biden about climate change as the “massive climate change lie,” citing a Wall Street Journal op-ed. On top of that, Ted Nugent, the country star-turned-Trump fanatic - also made one of the most-engaged Facebook posts about climate change last week, likely because he channeled exactly how hardcore Trump supporters feel about Democrats’ pleas for climate action: with intensely vulgar distrust.
On Instagram, some of the most engaged posts about climate change were also connected to the hurricane damage in the Northeast, including one post from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that got over 263k interactions. Another top post came from the Washington Post, about a new carbon pulldown facility in Iceland. It got over 64.4k interactions, again telling us that posts about breakthroughs in climate action tend to perform well on social media.
In our search for top-performing clean jobs content, we found that a group of professional outdoor athletes organized by a nonprofit called Protect Our Winters - or #pow for short - are using their platforms to advocate for climate action in Democrats’ reconciliation bill. One could consider these athletes microinfluencers, and they provide a unique opportunity to reach typically non-political audiences with political ideas they might be sympathetic to, such as pursuing climate action to preserve outdoor sports for generations to come.
And lastly, here are the top three tweets mentioning climate change and related terms from last week:
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.