The BJP’s official page and fan pages of Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned out to be the top spenders on Facebook ads.

With only three more phases to go before Lok Sabha elections are over, political parties are leaving no stone unturned to give a final thrust to their campaigning.

With affordable smartphones and internet, this election is also taking the discourse to the tiny gadgets that the ordinary Indian holds in their hands. Political parties are desperate to conquer the digital territory, and data shows that they are spending huge amounts for it.

In order to bring transparency, Facebook opened up its political advertisements archive to the public from February 21, 2019. The Facebook Ads library data shows that pro-Modi pages are topping the chart.

The BJP's official page and fan pages of Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned out to be the top spenders on Facebook ads. Out of the total 4,513 pages, India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) identified 281 pro-BJP pages, which have spent a total of Rs 7.8 crore on 18,454 ads.

The expenditure by these pages is around 39 per cent of the total ad expenditure incurred by all the pages (20 crore) on Facebook in the given eight weeks.

Facebook ad spending by Congress and its supporters was also substantial, but nowhere close to the expenditure incurred by pro-BJP and Modi fan pages.

The Congress and its fan pages spent close to Rs 1.15 crore, which was around 5 per cent of the total ad spending of all the pages put together.

BJP spends more, Congress has more ads

The DIU analysis found that pro-Modi and pro-BJP pages also appear as the top spenders individually.

Bharatiya Janata Party (Rs 2.6 cr), Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat (Rs 2.2 cr), Nation with NaMo (Rs 1.2 cr), My First Vote For Modi (Rs 1.1 cr) were the top spenders on Facebook ads. The official page of the Indian National Congress stood at number five with a spending of Rs 74 lakh in the last eight weeks.

In terms of the number of ads, the first and third positions were bagged by NaMo fan pages, INC bagged the second spot and BJP's official page stood at number four.

My First Vote For Modi, a page created on January 17 this year, posted the maximum number of ads. This page, with 75,500 followers on Facebook, posted 7,221 advertisements worth Rs 1.1 crore in eight weeks. The page sponsors photos and videos showing in favour of Modi, and also trolls Rahul Gandhi.

Following 'My First Vote For Modi', the official page of Indian National Congress posted the second highest number of ads at 2,706. The page sponsors photos and videos highlighting the promises Congress has come up with in this election. The page also sponsors content highlighting the 'fallacies' of the Modi government.

At number three stands 'Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat', a Facebook page where ordinary citizens can give direct feedback to the Prime Minister. This page, created on January 27 this year, has posted close to 2,498 ads at a cost of Rs. 2.2 crore.

Though the BJP was the top spender, it was number four in terms of number of ads. The party's official page posted 1,785 ads in eight weeks costing more than 2.6 crore.