How Much Money Political Forces Spend on Advertising: Martirosyan

As the time leading up to elections shortens, the use of social media for campaigning by political forces intensifies. Meta's platforms—Facebook and Instagram—remain the most visited and politically charged in Armenia, particularly Facebook. Against this backdrop, investments in political advertising on Meta have sharply increased. Media expert Samvel Martirosyan wrote about this on media.am.

“In recent years, Meta has categorized advertising into two types, separating advertisements related to public issues, politics, and elections, for which it requires specific information from advertisers and presents public reports on a separate platform—Meta Ad Library. The platform allows examination of general trends and developments related to Armenia. Data has been available since June 2022. Since then, a total of $262,496 has been spent on advertisements targeting Armenia on Meta.”

If we consider the last 90 days, this amount is disproportionately large compared to total expenditures since 2022. The exact amount is difficult to calculate, as Meta shows the costs of advertisements under $100 simply as “≤100.” However, if we calculate the expenses for all such advertisements from minimum to maximum, that is, from $0 to $100, the expenditure on political advertising in the last three months would amount to a minimum of $50,469 and a maximum of $98,269.

It is noteworthy that this only includes advertisements from political forces or figures. The total calculation also includes advertisements from media companies on political topics, as well as those from NGOs. For example, in the past 90 days, the CIVIC news agency posted 19 advertisements totaling $2,274, and the Informed Citizens Union NGO posted 20 advertisements worth $899. The FIP, belonging to the same NGO, posted an additional 60 ads for $590, the Armenian Public Radio posted 26 ads for $577, and the “7 Days” news agency posted one ad for $168.

Among the active advertisers classified this way are also officials and state institutions, such as the Government of Armenia, the Yerevan City Hall, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan, and Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Taron Chakhoyan, among others.

Looking at the past 90 days, the main advertiser has been the Civil Contract party. Notably, the head of the Vagarshapat community in the Armavir region, Argishti Mekhakyan, is the leading champion with a total of $11,220 from 75 advertisements (currently, he is no longer posting ads and did not post any during the pre-election period). The Our Way movement spent $8,392.23 on advertisements over three months, with $3,339 spent in just the last week. The Living Land party, through its various representatives’ pages, spent around $6,000 over three months. Interestingly, during the whole period from 2022 to today, the party spent a total of $10,207, while Tandylyan Mane alone spent $10,168 from her page.

Hayakve has notable spending, with a total of $3,328 from 418 advertisements in three months. This figure accounts for about 17% of the total number of advertisements available on the platform (during the specified period, over five hundred pages on the platform posted a total of 2,373 ads). Currently, Hayakve's active advertisements number 34. Moreover, Hayakve is the only political force utilizing targeted advertising by posting different ads for various audiences based on age, gender, and other targeting criteria. Other political forces predominantly post ads based on the “everyone” principle.

Among the new actors, the Wings of Unity should be noted, as they posted five ads, all of which were blocked by Meta. Most likely, this political force’s social media specialist is not well-acquainted with restrictions regarding political advertisements. We believe that activity will soon be observed here as well.

If we consider the last 30 days, the picture changes. The Civil Contract party stops investing money in advertisements, while Our Way, Hayakve, and Living Land are among the leaders. It is evident that significant investments in political advertising will occur in the upcoming months. However, a considerable portion of the advertising budgets will not be visible to us in such transparency. Because these elections will likely also be characterized by the active involvement of influencers on social networks. Much of this spending will remain in the gray area, carried out either in cash or through transfers between individual entrepreneurs (IE) and limited liability companies (LLC),” wrote media expert Samvel Martirosyan.