Digital ad spending data for the week of May 23rd to 29th
NRDC Action Fund spends big on IL Clean Energy Jobs Act
Here’s how much money climate, environmental, and energy groups spent on Facebook & Instagram ads in the past week.
You’ll notice that this week we added the # of ad variations that each advertiser is running. Advertisers often run dozens of variations of the same ad, so this is not the same as # of unique pieces of creative, but it does reflect upon whether or not an organization is running a serious advertising program.
Last week was the first week since we began tracking in April that a pro-climate advertiser outspent polluter groups on Facebook ads. The NRDC and the NRDC Action Fund combined spent nearly $150,000 on the platform in a seven-day period. The vast majority of those dollars were spent on advocating for the passage of the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA) in Illinois:
On the right, America’s Plastic Makers (via the American Chemistry Council) spent over $36,000 on Facebook ads gaslighting audiences with bizarre messaging against the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act. Their messaging takes a kitchen sink approach, featuring everything from vaccines to polar bears, claiming that single-use plastics are needed to fight climate change and restrictions on their use could create medical shortages. These ads are running nationwide, and the group tripled their spending over the past week.
One top advertiser excluded from our above spending chart is sneaker company Adidas, which spent $146,000 on the below ads last week highlighting their “Run for the Oceans” - an event they say will raise money to reduce plastic waste.
Meanwhile, on Google, no climate group’s advertising mentioned candidates for state or federal office, so they were excluded from the transparency library.
…and finally, here’s how much climate and energy advertisers have spent on Snapchat advertising this year:
While Snapchat spending was minimal last week, some of the latest ads on the platform, launched last weekend, include slick videos from MN 350, which is advertising against the Lane 3 pipeline and promoting a direct action in Northern Minnesota: