--- layout: default title: "BJP Outspends Congress, Others in Social Media Advertising" description: "A Hindustan Times report on political parties' spending on social media advertising during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, based on transparency data released by Facebook and Google." categories: [Media mentions] date: 2019-05-03 authors: ["Vidhi Choudhary"] source: "Hindustan Times" permalink: /media/bjp-congress-social-media-advertising-2019-election-hindustan-times/ created: 2026-01-01 --- **BJP Outspends Congress, Others in Social Media Advertising** is a *Hindustan Times* report by Vidhi Choudhary published on 3 May 2019. The article examines Facebook and Google political advertising transparency data from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, revealing BJP's ₹25 crore expenditure compared to Congress's ₹1.42 crore, whilst Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society questioned whether "abysmally low" reported figures concealed astroturfing strategies designed to evade platform transparency mechanisms. ## Contents 1. [Article Details](#article-details) 2. [Full Text](#full-text) 3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background) 4. [External Link](#external-link) ## Article Details
📰 Published in:
Hindustan Times
📅 Date:
3 May 2019
👤 Authors:
Vidhi Choudhary
📄 Type:
News Report
📰 Newspaper Link:
Read Online
## Full Text

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is way ahead of the Congress in advertising expenditure on social media at the end of the fourth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, according to data from advertising transparency reports by Google and Facebook - but the spending across parties is being described as much lower than expected by media experts.

The data shows that so far the BJP has spent ₹25 crore in advertisements across Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube. It has spent ₹11.6 crore and ₹13.43 crore on Google and Facebook respectively. The Congress, the main opposition party has spent a total of ₹1.42 crore for ads on Facebook (₹74 lakh) and Google (₹62 lakh).

The total spend on political ads across Facebook, Google and their affiliates stood at ₹42.3 crore between February 2019 to the end of April 2019 across 108,968 ads.

The balance political ad spend of ₹15.9 crore have been incurred by regional parties such as the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and individual leaders such as Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

These spends are part of the Facebook and Google political ad transparency reports - a measure most social media companies took as part of a voluntary code of ethics developed to ensure free, fair and ethical usage of social media platforms to maintain the integrity of the electoral process for the general elections 2019.

According to Sunil Abraham, founder and executive director for think tank, Centre for Internet and Society, the poll expenditure on social media appears to be abysmally low.

"Overall these numbers look low to me. It is possible that political parties are using astroturfing strategies to avoid public scrutiny through the transparency reports published by Facebook and Google. For those unfamiliar with the term, astroturfing is the creation of fake grassroots support - named after the fake grass that is used in sports fields," he said.

But other experts suggested these figures don't reflect the full picture.

"These are only the media spends by major political parties. Media spends don't reflect the total spend on social media because a lot of money is spent on both content creation and manpower to oversee online campaigns.

Major parties collectively are likely to spend a total of ₹350-400 crore on social media this time, especially to tap into the first time voter who are regular users of Internet in the country," said Ashish Bhasin, chairman and chief executive (CEO) at Dentsu Aegis Network - India and Greater South, a media buying agency.

In 2014, political parties would have spent over ₹175 crore on social media, Bhasin added.

The 2019 Lok Sabha elections have being widely touted as India's first social media election with close to 600 million Internet users in the country, more than double of 2014.

Some other digital media experts contended that the social media spends by the BJP are more conservative compared to the 2014 general elections.

"The focus is back to booth level marketing as opposed to online spends perhaps because the Election Commission has put stringent audit checks and are closely monitoring all the invoices and ads put up on social media," said Jyothirmayee JT, founder and chief executive of HiveMinds, a Bangalore based digital marketing agency.

{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background This report appeared during India's 2019 general election, marketed as the country's "first social media election" with 600 million internet users—more than double the 2014 electorate. Facebook and Google had implemented political advertising transparency reports following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and global regulatory pressure, creating a voluntary code of ethics for Indian elections that required disclosure of political ad spending, sponsors and reach. The ₹25 crore BJP figure versus Congress's ₹1.42 crore reflected both resource disparity and strategic differences, but Sunil Abraham's "abysmally low" assessment suggested these numbers substantially understated actual campaign expenditures. His astroturfing hypothesis—that parties created fake grassroots networks to circumvent transparency reporting—identified a systematic evasion strategy. By funding content through nominally independent pages, influencers or shell organisations rather than official party accounts, campaigns could generate political messaging without triggering disclosure requirements that applied only to ads bearing explicit political labels. Ashish Bhasin's estimate that parties would collectively spend ₹350-400 crore on social media—nearly ten times the reported ₹42.3 crore in transparency reports—supported Abraham's scepticism. Bhasin's breakdown clarified that ad placement costs represented only a fraction of digital campaign expenditure: content creation, manpower for managing online operations, and coordination infrastructure constituted substantial undisclosed spending categories. This gap between reported ad buys and total digital expenditure revealed fundamental limitations in transparency mechanisms focused narrowly on platform advertising purchases. The comparison with 2014's estimated ₹175 crore social media spending suggested either that 2019 campaigns were less digital-intensive—contradicting the "first social media election" narrative—or that spending had shifted toward channels and tactics invisible to transparency reporting. Jyothirmayee JT's observation that BJP spending appeared "more conservative" than 2014, attributing this to Election Commission auditing, implied that increased regulatory scrutiny had driven campaigns toward less traceable expenditure methods rather than genuinely reducing spending. The Election Commission's "stringent audit checks" mentioned by Jyothirmayee represented attempts to enforce existing expenditure limits and transparency requirements, but these mechanisms struggled with digital campaign opacity. Traditional election finance regulations, designed for print advertisements and rally expenditures, proved inadequate for tracking algorithmic content distribution, influencer partnerships and coordinated inauthentic behaviour that generated political messaging without formal advertising transactions. ## External Link - Read on Hindustan Times