How much are parties spending on social media?
Nearly Rs 50 crore was spent on online platforms for campaigning by political parties in the ongoing elections.
Aside from rallies, hoardings, and television ads, political parties in the last decade have steadily expanded campaigns to social media as well.
With ongoing elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Assam, the data also shows the scale of digital spending by major political parties in these states.
BJP spent the most
According to data from Google’s Ads Transparency Centre and Meta’s Ad Library, between January 25 and April 24, the Bharatiya Janata Party spent more than Rs 40 crore on digital ads across the four states. The party placed 50 thousand ads on both platforms — most targeted towards the West Bengal polls, followed by Assam.
In contrast, the Indian National Congress kept its digital ad spending under Rs 5 crore during the same period. The party had a visible presence in Meta, particularly in Kerala and Assam. But its spending on Google remained minimal. And it did not target ads for West Bengal.
Regional Parties relying on Meta
The Trinamool Congress in West Bengal spent around Rs 1.8 crore only on Meta, with no visible spending on Google. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, both the DMK and the AIADMK spent about Rs 0.9 and Rs 0.7 crore, respectively, on Meta, while showing almost no presence on Google.
A key difference in digital campaigning is who is actually running the ads. On Meta, the Bharatiya Janata Party largely runs ads through its own official party and state pages, keeping a significant share of its advertising within its own network.
Other parties, such as the TMC, the DMK, and the AIADMK, also use their official pages. But they also rely more heavily on third-party or supporting pages to amplify their campaigns.
For example, leaders and aligned pages linked to TMC played a major role. Abhishek Banerjee’s official page and three other pages posted in support of the TMC spent more than Rs 3.5 crore.
The DMK’s campaign was amplified by supporting pages such as “Ellorum Nammudan” and “Orae Thalaivan” with total spending around Rs 2.5 crore.
Where’s the accountability?
Even though social media is now a major part of election campaigning, the system for tracking digital spending remains limited. Despite the Election Commission of India's provisions about disclosure of expenditure on online campaigning, it still remains harder to track and regulate in practice.
According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, there is no standardised system for reporting spending on platforms like Meta and Google. This becomes a bigger issue with third-party pages, whose spending often falls outside official disclosures, which makes the actual scale of digital campaign expenditure higher than what is actually reported.