Digital ad spending data for the week of July 18 - 24
Top spenders last week include The Climate Pledge, Exxon, Volvo, Geothermal, Potential Energy Coalition, and LCV
Spending on climate, environment, and energy ads on Facebook and Google remained mostly steady last week with climate groups mostly continuing ad campaigns pushing for climate action in the American Jobs Plan. However, Facebook ad spending by polluters grew by almost a third thanks almost entirely to ExxonMobil.
Before we dig into it, here are the top 25 spenders on climate ads on Facebook from last week:
The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge continues to be a huge spender on Facebook ads, having spent more than $300,000 a week on the platform. Potential Energy Coalition’s Science Moms also remains one of the biggest spenders on Facebook among climate groups, and they’ve now started running ads citing women scientists about the current consequences of climate change. These ads, like others of their broader campaign, are overwhelmingly targeted at women aged 25 and up in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin.
The League of Conservation Voters is still targeting Democratic lawmakers in competitive constituencies with Facebook ads pressuring them to act on climate in the American Jobs Plan. They’re now also running ads targeting New Hampshire and Nevada calling for expanding protected public lands and promoting President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. These ads exclusively target 18-34-year-olds in each state (which are both expected to have competitive U.S. Senate races next year) and mostly target women.
ExxonMobil increased their spending on Facebook ads by nearly $70,000 from the previous week to last, but they appear to have just increased the money they’re putting behind ads they launched earlier this month.
However, we did notice that another pro-polluter group, the American Chemistry Council, started running ads under a new Facebook page, American Chemistry, on top of running ads under America’s Plastic Makers. They’re targeting older Americans in a variety of states - primarily Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, among others - pushing against a “Superfund Tax” on “chemicals” and “essential materials.” The ads lead to landing pages like this one, and as far as we can tell, the word “plastic” isn’t mentioned once anywhere in the campaign.
Google and YouTube
The League of Conservation Voters is still the only climate group reported by the Google Transparency Report, but they’re still spending relatively huge amounts of money on YouTube ads. Last week, they spent $68,300 on ads like this one:
Snapchat
With their Snapchat campaign to highlight how little many utilities have done to transition to clean energy, the Sierra Club is now one of the top 10 spenders on the platform among climate groups, having spent $5,054 there so far. We also noticed that MN 350 has launched a new ad on the platform that highlights how fossil fuel companies have been lying to Minnesotans for years about the consequences of global warming. The ad leads to this landing page that talks more about how the Minnesota Attorney General is suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute. They’ve spent $114 on the campaign so far, which will go until July 28th.
Overall, here’s how much has been spent on Snapchat so far this year on ads related to climate change, clean energy, and the environment: