West Bengal Elections: Mamata Banerjee’s TMC tops digital politics, spends highest on Facebook

New Delhi: CM Mamata Banerjee and her party have spent Rs.1.4 crores since December on social media campaigning. Mamata through Prashant Kishor’s Indian Political Action Committee, has spent more than Rs. 22 lakhs in the past week on their Facebook ad campaign ‘Banglar Gorbo Mamata’.

“The last few weeks before the state goes into polls are very crucial for the parties. The parties use this time to gain confidence of loyal voters and also attract the attention of the undecided voters. Facebook has remained one of the most important medium over time to target voters and Prashant Kishor is using it to the fullest by promoting content from not the party’s official page but also other allied pages,” said a political commentator.

After TMC, BJP is the highest spender on Facebook ads. The ‘Amar Poribar BJP Poribar’ page by BJP is one of the highest spenders on Facebook in West Bengal. According to Facebook Ad Library, Rs 385,753 has been spent on this page in the last 30 days. ‘BJP West Bengal’, another page of the party spent Rs 216,853 in the same time span.

While political parties are going aggressive on digital campaigning, tech giants like Facebook are collecting huge revenues from political ads. For instance, BJP has spent over Rs4.5 crore on political ads on Facebook in the last year.

A digital expert explained the reason behind this, “When Chinese apps were banned, and there was an ‘Atmanirbhar’ wave wherein a number of Indian apps came into the market. Many thought some of them would catch the imagination of the people and would become the next TikTok. But unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet and that is why we see a further consolidation of political ad-dollars in the pockets of big tech brands (namely Facebook and Google).”