Researchers at NYU’s Ad Observatory, which monitors Facebook political and issue-based advertising, compiled the data based on a search of Facebook’s Ad Library for advertisements after Oct. 1 that include any of the following keyword pairings: “Trump + Walter,” “Trump + diagnosis” and “Trump + test.”
The data also indicates that Trump, by far, had the largest number of total advertisements, at 664 between the official Donald J. Trump and Team Trump pages. Cost of Chaos, a progressive, anti-Trump Facebook page, had the second-largest spend and total ad count during the weeklong period, with researchers estimating it spent $36,029 across 42 advertisements.
While several progressive and Democratic groups are turning to Facebook to advertise around Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, none of the pages are associated with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The former vice president’s campaign has been purchasing advertisements that more subtly discuss the diagnosis: On Monday, Biden’s campaign started running an ad targeting voters in Wisconsin and pushing the idea that Biden “trusts the science,” and on Thursday, the campaign started promoting its video of Biden slowly putting on a mask with the caption, “When it comes to Covid, Joe Biden will follow the science.”
As Election Day inches closer, Facebook has made several changes to its political advertising policy, including a plan to suspend all such advertisements after the polls close on Nov. 3 in an effort to squash any confusion, misinformation and abuse about the outcome and legitimacy of the elections. And although Facebook rolled out a new tool in June to allow users to remove all political ads from their feeds, the company’s refusal to remove or flag advertisements that include falsehoods has come under intense scrutiny.
That’s especially true given the platform’s dominant position for political advertisements this election cycle since Twitter and TikTok banned all political advertisements from their sites last year and Google implemented restrictions on micro-targeted political ads at the beginning of the year.
Facebook declined to comment. In response to Morning Consult’s questions about the ad spend data, the Trump campaign provided a statement touting the president’s pandemic response “even when he contracted and fought off the coronavirus.”
