THE Tory party has spent more than £30,000 on Facebook adverts promoting Rishi Sunak in the space of a week.
Data available on Meta’s advert library, Facebook’s parent company, shows that a staggering £31,345 was spent on just 12 posts by the party between December 24 and 30.
All of the adverts, which are currently still live and running on the social media site, urge users to follow the Prime Minister’s page for updates.
Overall, the Tories spent around £100,000 on 49 adverts in December alone, the highest amount spent on the PM’s page in a single month in 2023.
The high spending prompted outrage on social media, amid speculation that the Tories are ramping up digital campaigning ahead of the General Election, expected to be held this year.
The National analysed the publicly available data and found that the Tories had paid for 33 separate adverts in December urging social media users to follow the PM.
There were 15 posts with a short 26-second promotional video urging users to “like” the PM’s page to “receive updates from me direct to your feed”. The four most recent of these which are currently active have so far gathered between 800,000 and 900,000 impressions, 90% of which were seen in England, 5% in Scotland, 3% in Wales and 2% in Northern Ireland.
A further 18, eight of which are still active, contained a picture of Sunak and the text: “I know most things you see from me are what other people say - hear what I say and do, directly from me. Follow today.”
The recent figures show a huge boost in spending in the final months of 2023 on Sunak’s social media page, with just under a third of adverts paid for by the Tories on the page going live in December. Of 150 overall, 49 were published in the last month of 2023.
And, just under an estimated £50,000 was spent on five adverts in November, all relating to the Tories cutting taxes.
In October they spent an estimated £9000 on 93 adverts targeting several towns that received funding from the UK Government. The Facebook ad library gives an estimated spend on each advert, rather than a full figure, with these 93 costing between £0 and £99.
Earlier in the year, Sunak only paid for five adverts - four in July and one in June. The majority of which were in support of Claire Holmes, the Tories by-election candidate for Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire, a seat they lost to Labour.
Who Targets Me, a group which tracks the use of political adverts on social media, first revealed the figure on Twitter/X, later adding that Sunak’s Facebook page has grown by 96,000 followers in the past four weeks.
Despite having just under 769,000 followers, he still falls behind the Labour Party (1.1m), Jeremy Corbyn (1.6m) and Boris Johnson (2m), but has more than the Conservative Party page (732,900).
On the advertising spending, Who Targets Me added: “This is an unprecedentedly large figure for a UK politician outside of an election period.”
“On current polling, Sunak has about a year left as party leader, yet this investment is building his brand and reach, rather than the main party page, which could be used to support individual candidates (and is a useful asset after the next election, whatever the result),” they added.
Sunak bought just over £9,000 of Meta ads on the 30th and has now spent £31,500 on them in the last 7 days. This is an unprecedentedly large figure for a UK politician outside of an election period. pic.twitter.com/yLHsy5Wbjz
— Who Targets Me (@WhoTargetsMe) January 1, 2024
The group warned that 2024 is set to be a “really digital election”.
Natalie Bennet, former UK Green party leader and now a member of the House of Lords, shared her dismay at the figures on Twitter/X. She wrote: “#democracy - it would be a good idea.
“Which means not getting the politics the few pay for."
Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, said it was “typical” that Sunak is “building his own brand rather than Tories or UK”.
Other social media users were quick to hit out at the excessive spending.
“Sunak burning through the Tory donor money like a Silicon Valley startup splurging their first round of VC capital funding,” one joked, adding: “‘It’s all about brand awareness!’”.
Another said: “This election is going to be Cambridge Analytica on crack. Such a big, diverse group of idiots to target and they know very well how to target them.”
One LibDem member wrote: “This is what opposition parties are up against in 2024. Prepare for an extremely expensive election year! The Tories know they are in crisis and they are prepared to throw a lot of £££ around. We know they've raised spending limits but that's just for the regulated period.”
See the full list of adverts paid for by the Tories on Rishi Sunak's Facebook page below.
