The digital dashboard: the first of a twice-weekly guide to the social media campaigns

UK election: which parties are winning the online war for ads, cash and votes?

Welcome to the digital dashboard, the Guardian’s twice-weekly guide to the twists and turns of the social media campaign trail.

In the weeks before the general election, we will be putting the parties’ online campaigns under the microscope, looking at how they are setting out their stalls, which voters, constituencies and issues they are focusing on, and what is (and isn’t) cutting through with the public.

Conservatives: digital campaign targets 30 marginals

Although it’s early days, the Conservative party has tested adverts on specific demographics and geographies, giving an early indication of how its digital campaign could evolve.

Its most successful advert – active since Monday costing just shy of £10,000 and garnering more than 800,000 impressions – carries an image of an uncharacteristically kempt Boris Johnson targeting the over-55s and featuring generic plinky-plonky music. The prime minister hits all the key messages: “get Brexit done”, “get parliament working” alongside references to the NHS, schools and “safer streets”.

Another, costing £7,000 to £8,000 and featuring an 80s-themed neon font and a tune that wouldn’t have been out of place on Knight Rider, contains a similarly generic message that is instead aimed at men aged 18-34.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An unusually kempt Boris Johnson on Conservative Facebook ads.

In the first week of the election campaign, between £30,000 and £50,000 was also spent on adverts targeting marginal constituencies the Tories appear to consider winnable, based on 2017 margins and pro-Brexit sentiment.

Thirty constituencies, chiefly in the Midlands and north of England, received Facebook adverts outlining exactly how many votes the Tories would need to bridge the gap. The ads, which are now inactive, contained identical text reading: “Your vote in [constituency] will be the difference between a majority government that will get Brexit done and another hung parliament.”

In at least one instance, however, the copy-and-paste job underpinning the campaign appears to have misfired, with ads apparently confusing voters in Wrexham with those in Blackpool South.

Labour: focus on NHS and transforming Britain

Labour’s most widely viewed advert in the opening days of the campaign, with more than 6m impressions, links to a Guardian article and warns of “skyrocketing costs for life-saving medicines” on the NHS after a trade deal between Donald Trump and Johnson.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour Facebook ads

A further 1 million people have seen adverts from Labour warning that “a vote for the Lib Dems gets you Brexit” due to the risk of splitting the progressive vote.

Smaller parties: Lib Dems lock in on Brexit and Brexit party checks out

The Liberal Democrats hammered only one message in their first seven days: stopping Brexit and campaigning to remain in the EU.

“If you want to stop Brexit, be a Liberal Democrat voter,” reads the most widely viewed, seen by 3.5 million people. “The two old parties have failed Britain. The Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit and build a brighter future,” promises another.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brexit-focused Lib Dem Facebook ads Composite: Guardian Design/Facebook

The party has since launched a second wave of ads pitching the Lib Dems as the “biggest, strongest party of remain”.

Meanwhile, the Brexit party spent nothing in the first week – but later paid about £17,000 for a series of adverts attacking Johnson’s proposed deal with the EU. Perhaps not the best investment in view of its subsequent decision not to challenge the Conservatives.

The money race: Labour and Tories compete on Facebook ad spend

Though Labour was quicker out of the traps on Facebook ad spending, the Conservatives have since overtaken their main rival, with the central party’s spend topping £100,000 since 29 October, when MPs voted for the general election. Labour has spent more than £88,393 in the same period, with the Liberal Democrats shelling out £56,732. The Brexit party has spent £17,000, according to Facebook’s ad library.

It’s early days and these figures are likely to soar in the coming weeks.

Video views: Labour takes an early lead

Labour is winning the video campaign battle, receiving more than double the Conservatives’ view count, according to a Guardian analysis of Facebook posts.

Since 29 October, Labour videos have received more than 19m views compared with 7m for the Conservatives. Labour’s greatest hits came from the Momentum campaign group, which has several videos with more than 1m views.

Many of the most popular across the political spectrum are short clips of TV interviews. One of Momentum’s most successful posts was a clip of its national coordinator, Laura Parker, speaking about the ethics of billionaires on Politics Live, while the only Conservative video to reach a million views showed a speech from a Brexit-supporting teenager on BBC’s Question Time.

Momentum is asking volunteers to monitor broadcast interviews and flag potential clips to its social media team, the organisation’s co-founder Emma Rees told the Politics Theory Other podcast.

Attack videos are a key focus of social media campaigning. The Tories posted five videos in two days condemning Labour on national security, Scottish independence and Brexit.

Total view counts for the Conservatives were taken from the party’s official page and Johnson’s, while Labour’s total was a sum of views on Momentum, Labour and Jeremy Corbyn videos. The view counts were taken at approximately 12.30pm on 11 November.

Digital dashboard team: Michael Barton, Pamela Duncan, Niamh McIntyre, David Pegg and Joseph Smith