Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Government Facebook advertising targeting the wrong audience
The full extent of the UK Government's humiliation at having to withdraw their 'meaningful' vote on Theresa May's Brexit was evidenced this morning by the revelation that they spent almost £100,000 of taxpayers’ money in the last week buying Facebook adverts in a bid to convince the public to support Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
The Guardian reports that the adverts were promoted with the hashtag #BackTheBrexitDeal and offered short videos promoted using civil service resources and linking to an official government website called The Brexit Deal Explained. They add that although Facebook does not give precise data on who was targeted, the publicly-funded adverts in support of the deal cost £96,684 and were shown at least 5 million times in the last week.
Different adverts were tailored to different audiences, with men more likely than women to see government adverts stating that the deal would help Britain cut levels of immigration. There were also ads to sell the deal in the constituent countries of the UK, with short videos specifically made for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
There has been a lot of controversy over Facebook advertising in recent times, not least the use of data to target them effectively. The fact that none of these adverts appeared in my browser indicates that the Government may well have got their targeting right.
But the real questions has to be why, when the electorate that mattered on this particular vote consisted of MPs, were they spending public money trying to convince people who did not have a vote and who could not influence the outcome?
The Guardian reports that the adverts were promoted with the hashtag #BackTheBrexitDeal and offered short videos promoted using civil service resources and linking to an official government website called The Brexit Deal Explained. They add that although Facebook does not give precise data on who was targeted, the publicly-funded adverts in support of the deal cost £96,684 and were shown at least 5 million times in the last week.
Different adverts were tailored to different audiences, with men more likely than women to see government adverts stating that the deal would help Britain cut levels of immigration. There were also ads to sell the deal in the constituent countries of the UK, with short videos specifically made for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
There has been a lot of controversy over Facebook advertising in recent times, not least the use of data to target them effectively. The fact that none of these adverts appeared in my browser indicates that the Government may well have got their targeting right.
But the real questions has to be why, when the electorate that mattered on this particular vote consisted of MPs, were they spending public money trying to convince people who did not have a vote and who could not influence the outcome?
