Digital ad spending data for the week of May 16th to 22nd
New greenwashing ads from natural gas and plastic-producing groups
Here are the top 25 spenders on climate-related Facebook ads last week.
While ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute are continuing to drop more than $50,000 a week on Facebook ads, they don’t seem to be running any particularly new campaigns from the previous week. However, there are two new polluter-allied groups who have increased their spending on Facebook political ads.
The first of these groups is an opaque 501(c)4 nonprofit called The Empowerment Alliance (TEA for short), a group funded by anonymous wealthy donors and run by Republican operatives that was launched in 2019 to oppose the Green New Deal and promote U.S. natural gas during the 2020 election.
TEA ran Facebook ads supporting then-President Trump in 2020, and so far this year they’ve spent $89,878 on the platform, mostly running simple ads using rhetoric like “STOP AOC AND THE GREEN NEW DEAL!” and “JOE BIDEN IS BOWING TO COMMUNIST CHINA.” These ads have been running since May 3rd and mostly target Americans aged 45 and up in a specific set of states: TX, FL, OH, PA, MI, NC, GA, AZ, IA, WI, and WV.
The second new polluter-allied group to ramp up their Facebook political ad spending is the American Chemistry Council under the page “Plastic Makers of America.” Last week, they started running Facebook ads against a proposed bill in Congress called the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would, among other things “amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act to reduce the production and use of certain single-use plastic products and packaging.”
Groups like Greenpeace and Break Free From Plastic Movement support the bill, but Plastic Makers of America argues that the bill is “short-sighted” and that plastics are “necessary for the very products needed to combat climate change,” the latter of which is eerily similar to recent campaigns from ExxonMobil and Enbridge. Their ads, which are mostly targeted at young adults nationwide, are also reminiscent of those from oil companies, which we don’t find particularly surprising since Exxon, Chevron, and Shell are all partners in the group.
It looks like the only climate group whose ads landed in the Google + YouTube political ad library last week was the NRDC Action Fund, which spent $400 targeting congressional districts PA-17, PA-07, PA-08, and MI-08, all swing districts represented by Democrats. They’re showing folks in those districts a video ad that promotes the American Jobs Plan:
Finally, here are the top spenders on Snapchat political ads this year related to climate and energy. All happen to be from pro-climate advertisers.
We’ve added two groups to our list: Clean Virginia Fund, a group we covered last week that’s supporting Jennifer Carroll Foy for governor in Virginia, and the Nevada Conservation League. The latter is running ads supporting SB 448 in Nevada, which would mandate the construction of $100 million worth of electric vehicle charging stations, fund more power lines for electrification, expand tax credits for large battery storage systems, and more. They’re targeting their ads at adults in the Las Vegas, Carson City, and Reno metro areas.