If there was any doubt that
Donald J. Trump was in active campaign mode, an analysis of political ad spending on Facebook the
past two months should put that to rest.
The analysis, which was conducted by New York University professors forThe New York Times, shows that Trump -- both individually and vis-a-vis his Political Action Committee
-- is Facebook’s top U.S. political advertiser, by a wide margin.
The President’s PAC, Trump Make America Great Again, was No. 1, running 4,128 individual ads, delivering
26.4 million impressions for $274,000 for the eight-week May-July period analyzed.
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Trump, individually, ranks 6th, with 5,396 ads, delivering 11.3 million impressions for
$83,700.
The analysis, which was enabled by a new searchable database of U.S. political ads Facebook launched May 24, as part of its new public disclosure efforts, also showed some
impressive aggregate levels of political ad spending on the social network to date.
The meta analysis, which goes back to Sept. 9, 2014, shows 267,000 ads across 9,842 sponsors
delivering as much as 3.885 billion impressions for as much as $71.8 million.
The analysis is worth reading in depth, because it also breaks down insights showing who was most
targeted by Facebook political advertising. The heat map visualization below will give you a good idea.
