Thread by @rowlsmanthorpe

Now the polls have closed, let's have a look at the campaign on Facebook (THREAD)

In the week before voting day in the UK, Change UK spent £130,000, more than three times Labour's page and more than five times the Tories

Can money buy you love?

The other big spenders were the Lib Dems.

Facebook's crappy data makes it hard to tell exactly, but I'd say the Lib Dems' page spent at least £80,000 in the last seven days before the vote

To see the last minute Lib Dems spending, here's a snapshot from 22 May. Note the big gap between the Lib Dems and Change UK

(Apologies for not being able to tell you the exact spending totals. Despite constantly saying how committed it is to transparency, Facebook makes it almost impossible to get even this kind of data. Weird that)

This is the Facebook ad spending in the 30 days leading up to the UK European elections

Change UK splashing the cash - over £200,000

Lib Dems spending big as well

From this perspective we can see that Brexit Party was active on Facebook as well, spending almost £100,000

Which brings us onto the biggest mystery of the whole campaign

What happened to Brexit Party in the last days of the campaign?

After spending big at the beginning, they gave up completely on 22 May. Not a single ad, even on polling day

This is EXTREMELY unusual

Did they run out of money? Did they stop seeing any benefit? Did they decide they'd won already, so why try harder?

Or was it something to do with the Electoral Commission investigation?

To give you an indication just how weird this is, here's ad volume in a typical election (via @WhoTargetsMe)

The Brexit Party missed out on this entire spike. They didn't even run get-out-the-vote ads

Why???

Hang on - @WhoTargetsMe has been in touch. Apparently I've misread this hateful Facebook data. The Brexit Party spent £3,952 on polling day itself

Still, the general point stands. Very peculiar behaviour

Anyway, back to the numbers. Via the brilliant @WhoTargetsMe, here are the Remain / Leave Facebook ad spends for polling day (ie. including all campaigning groups etc)

Remain: £168,013
Leave: £11,272

That's a 14-fold advantage for Remain

@WhoTargetsMe Here's the Facebook ad spend in the week leading up to the European election - this time with the local / sneaky spending included

Takeaways:
- Lib Dems were the real big spenders
- Maybe Labour did make an effort
- Greens! Check you out
- Brexit Party mystery deepens

@WhoTargetsMe Tories already despairing about their performance in these elections

Maybe they could have helped themselves by actually, I don't know, running a campaign?

The Lib Dems ran almost as many ads on Facebook as the Tories spent in pounds

(That last stat via @WhoTargetsMe. Install their browser plugin and help us get the data Facebook doesn't want us to have!)

@WhoTargetsMe Change UK getting absolutely destroyed out here. Reminder: they spent £214,165 on Facebook ads for their page, more than any other party

@WhoTargetsMe Not sure what all this means right now, but I'm going to be writing more about this in the next week

In the meantime, if you see any unusual ads, send them my way

Like these by the Lib Dems targeted at Labour voters

This page got a £19k boost in the week before the election

@WhoTargetsMe Tommy Robinson nowhere in the North East. One reason: this smart, highly targeted Facebook ad campaign from @hopenothate. This stuff can make a big difference, done well

@WhoTargetsMe @hopenothate Anyway, that's enough for now. To end on a suitably sordid note: one of the many spenders in the last week before the election was @Swatch, who decided to use Brexit as an opportunity to flog their watches. Pure class / ENDS