Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) surpassed the Rs 100 crore mark in terms of advertisement spends on Google in the last six years since May 2018, a report from Google revealed. The party has spent Rs 103 crore since May 2018 on political advertisements (both videos & images). Google started publishing its Google Ads Transparency report in May 2018.
According to the report, 68.2% of BJP’s spend on Google ads between May 31, 2018, and April 27, 2024, was on video, while the remaining 31.8% was on images. Karnataka, UP and Rajasthan were states that top the list in terms of ads expenditure on states for the BJP. More than 161,000 of the overall 217,992 content pieces (73% share) described as “political advertisement” by Google were published by BJP during the period stated above.
The opposition party Congress on the other hand spent Rs 49 crore during the same period on political advertisements on Google. DMK of Tamil Nadu is the third party on the list, spending over Rs 25 crore since May 2018, the report revealed.
Google’s definition of political ads includes all ads by news publications, government publicity departments and even commercial ads featuring actor-politicians. According to the report, at the time of the second phase of campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections, political parties spent nearly Rs 15 crore each on promoting their manifesto, policies, and achievements on Google alone.
