Digital ad spending data for the week of April 11th to April 17th
Breaking down climate & energy-related spending across Facebook, Google, and Snapchat
Welcome to our first round up of climate and energy-related digital spending data! Each week, we’ll track the top 25 digital advertisers by dollars spend, and monitor trends on how much they’re spending, what they’re saying, and to which audiences they’re advertising.
Here are the top 25 spenders on climate-related Facebook ads last week.
Among climate groups, Potential Energy’s “Science Moms” page, Friends of the Earth, and EDF Action were the top spenders on political ads on Facebook, each spending over $20,000 last week.
Science Moms is continuing their ad campaign targeted at parent-aged women urging them to push Congress for climate action for their kids’ future, because “Later is too late.” As part of this campaign, they spent at least $1.5k on Spanish ads primarily targeted at women aged 25-44 in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, EDF Action appears to be trying out using boosted news - i.e., putting money behind real news stories that are favorably framed and targeting those ads at key audiences, which in this case appears to be mostly older women in states like Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest spenders on the platform last week were Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute. While Exxon advertised through their own branded Facebook page, API ran the majority of its advertising via two pages: Energy Citizens and Energy for Progress. We’d like to note that their ads being run under the latter are mostly targeted at states in the Midwest and the Sunbelt, like Iowa, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as Washington, D.C.
Over on Google, there seems to have been very little political ad spending by climate groups or polluters last week - although their transparency library typically only includes advertising that mentions a candidate for state legislative, statewide, or federal office.
NC Warn spent at least $2,000 on Google Search ads (targeting NC, of course) criticizing Duke Energy and fracking, and the Center for Biological Diversity spent $300 on a YouTube ad that calls on President Biden to enact stronger clean car standards.
Check out the Center for Biological Diversity’s ad here:
There is also very limited spending on political ads on Snapchat by climate groups and polluters. Most recently, in late March, the League of Conservation Voters spent $6,159 on two ads targeting Arizona and Georgia thanking their new Democratic senators for backing the For the People Act.