And made a single payment of more than £1 million to the tech firm
The Conservative party made a single advertising payment of more than £1 million to Facebook during the 2017 general election.
£1,018,161.60 was paid to Facebook Ireland Limited on May 29, made up of 95 different payments for Facebook and Instagram adverts during the month of May.
Some correlate to constituencies, like Jeremy Hunt’s South West Surrey which an invoice shows spent £505.94 on “videos.” Other notable locations include Somerset, where Jacob Rees-Mogg sits, and Sadiq Khan’s old stomping ground Tooting.
There are also payments described using an alphanumeric code, the largest of which is a £181,991.84 Facebook payment for the group “General Election AC” – likely a segment of the population highlighted by campaigners as key voters to be targeted with advertising.
Two specific posts received £500 boosts, one’s title begins: “MUST WATCH: Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policy…” and corresponds to the video embedded below.
The invoice for the political party’s election Facebook spend in June totalled £812,687.09. Considering polling day was June 8, the Tory Facebook budget in the final week of the election was around £100,000 a day.
Electoral Commission data shows the Conservatives spent £2.1 million on Facebook advertising alone, of an £18.5 million total spend.
Labour spent a little over £500,000 of their £11 million war chest by comparison. A damning sum, when you consider Corbyn generally has three times as many followers as May cross-platform, which is a crude but illustrative example.
The Tories spent 367 per cent more than Labour did in the same period during the election, whose total came to £577,269.
Despite spending 71.4 per cent of Labour’s budget, £412,329, the Lib Dems only won 2.4 per cent of Labour’s seats.
