Digital ad spending data for the week of August 29 - September 4
Top spenders last week include Climate Pledge, Exxon, API, NRDC Action Fund, Climate Power
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen climate groups quickly grow their digital ad spending, but that growth seems to have slowed significantly last week, with some groups reaching an apparent peak in spending or reducing their investments.
Before we dig into it, here are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related ads on Facebook from last week:
The NRDC Action Fund spent a record $75,534 on Facebook ads last week, their most recent ads focusing on protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Although the Biden administration has acted to halt development in the sanctuary, the Action Fund is advocating for Congress to make such protection permanent. When it comes to the American Jobs Plan, though, they seem to be focusing on advocating for equitable climate action that includes replacing the nation’s lead pipes.
The biggest change in spending that we saw last week, though, came from Climate Power, which seems to have significantly shifted gears in their digital ad spending. They spent $71,272 last week (compared to $4,060 the previous week) through a new page, called “Climate Power Education Fund), that seems to just put money behind news stories that talk up clean energy and sound the alarm on climate change’s devastating consequences. They’re targeting a variety of states with these news ads, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon, New Jersey, and Maine.
While Facebook ad spending across climate groups has stalled, we also saw polluters temper their spending on the platform, especially ExxonMobil, which nearly halved its spending from the previous week to last week. It appears that they’re running the same ads arguing against “tax hikes on American businesses,” albeit with a smaller budget, while the American Petroleum Institute’s Energy Citizens page is now focusing their pressure campaign on four representatives: Reps. Tom O’Halleran (AZ), Matt Cartwright (PA), Conor Lamb (PA), and Sharice Davids (KS).
Overall, here’s how much climate groups, polluters, and other pages spent on Facebook ads last week. We’ll note that almost all of the spending in the Other group comes from the California Public Utilities Commission, which has been running a huge multilingual public information campaign for clean energy and environmental conservancy for months:
Google and YouTube
While the League of Conservation Voters significantly stepped down their Facebook ad spending last week, that may have been due to the fact that they nearly doubled their already-high spending on Google and YouTube ads. They spent a whopping $158,000 on the platform last week, mostly on carefully geotargeted YouTube ads supporting various Democratic representatives. Check out their latest ad supporting Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema:
Snapchat
Climate groups did not start any new Snapchat political ad campaigns last week, but we did find that Amazon’s Climate Pledge has so far dropped $87,037 on ads targeting users that belong to categories like “Green Living Enthusiasts” and “Advocates and Activists.” These ads largely mirror the ads they’ve been running on Facebook for months.
Overall, here are the top spenders on climate ads on Snapchat so far this year: