Digital ad spending data for the week of June 13th - 19th
New ad campaigns from API, the plastic industry, and Mars, Inc.
Here are the top 25 spenders on climate-related Facebook ads last week.
The American Petroleum Institute’s Energy Citizens started running a new Facebook ad campaign, this time railing against new taxes to collect emails. They make a variety of familiar claims that industries have made for years against new taxes: “Raising taxes will hurt our economy”; “Our continued recovery is at stake if taxes are raised”; “Raising taxes puts U.S. jobs at stake”; etc.
In other ads, they claim that raising taxes “would put a lower carbon future at stake”, and that “We need more energy jobs not tax increases.” For the most part, their new campaign is targeted at older men in Midwestern and Sun Belt states.
The American Chemistry Council’s page, “America’s Plastic Makers”, also launched a new ad campaign against Sen. Jeff Merkley’s Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 that made arguments similar to the ones above used by API. Even though the bill is focused on reducing pollution from single-use plastic, America’s Plastic Makers seems to be trying to argue that the bill would “jeopardize U.S. jobs and cripple our supply chains for essential products” and could “threaten a stronger, more resilient economy.”
They also imply in one ad that increased plastics regulation would hamper clean energy investments, since “from PPE to solar panels and wind energy, plastics are crucial to a safer, more sustainable future.” Like Energy Citizens, their new ads are mostly targeted at older men in states like Texas, Michigan, Florida and Arizona.
We also noticed that multinational candy and pet food company Mars ran a couple of climate-focused ads earlier this month. It looks like they spent between $15k - $20k on a pair of Instagram ads targeting mostly young adult women about how they’ve “committed efforts and resources to projects like reef restoration, reducing our carbon footprint globally and developing more sustainable packaging.”
Overall, here’s how much climate groups and polluters spent on Facebook ads last week:
*Groups in this category include proponents of alternative fuel sources other than solar and wind, power companies and utilities advertising their services, and non-energy companies advertising about clean energy and conservation.
Now that the Virginia Democratic primary for governor is over, Clean Virginia ended their YouTube ad campaign supporting Jennifer Carroll Foy, who lost to Terry McAuliffe earlier this month. The only climate groups picked up by the Google Transparency Report last week were NRDC Action Fund and Climate Power, which are both continuing their campaigns for the American Jobs Plan and climate action, respectively.
And finally, when it comes to political ads on Snapchat, there has been no new campaigns by climate groups, and it appears that no climate groups are currently running any campaigns on the platform. All the same, here’s how much climate groups have spent on the platform so far this year: