Social media has been an integral part of this election campaign, with political candidates and parties using it to get their message across, whether from individual accounts or the party pages.

Posting comments or sharing videos to explain plans and pledges is one way of trying to cut through the fog of campaigning.

With thousands of social media followers it might work to persuade them - but how do political parties know they are hitting the right audience?

Twitter has banned political adverts, but Facebook allows them, both on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook allows any individual or organisation to pay for targeted adverts which can appear on a user's page - depending on what that user, and their friends have been engaging with.

The social media company says there are rules and guidelines in place for political ads and that if those rules are breached it may restrict the use of the advert or take it down.

Last year, Facebook launched its Ad Library, which can be used to find out how much a political party or individual candidate has spent on adverts, what is in the advert, and who is targeted.

Fine Gael spent €15,808 in the first week of the campaign and another €13,018 in the week to 27 January.

On Leo Varadkar's page, the spend in the first week was €4,383, with another €144 spent in the week to 27 January.

The Ad Library gives information about the demographics of the audience who saw an ad, the cost of the ad, and how many impressions it got on the site.

In the first week of campaigning, Fianna Fáil spent €2,968 on the official party page, while on Micheál Martin's own page the spend was €120.

That went up quite a bit and in the week to 29 January - the party spent €29,842 on its page while Mr Martin spent €1,934 on adverts.

At nearly €35k spent in total, Fianna Fáil has spent the most on Facebook adverts.

In the first week of the campaign Sinn Féin spent €3,322, and in the week to 29 January another €7,125.

Labour, the Green Party, Social Democrats, Solidarity/People Before Profit, Aontú, and Renua have not funded their campaigns with significant sums of money.

However, a Facebook advert that costs just a few hundred euro can have 20,000 impressions, which refers to the number of times something is displayed on a screen.

If you want to keep an eye on how much is being spent by the various parties and candidates in this General Election, use the search tool here.