Election Ad Watch: Liberals outspending Conservatives to get Facebook's boomer and gen-X users

OTTAWA — With over a million views, the most popular Liberal ad on Facebook and Instagram doesn’t quite fit the conventional profile of viral internet content. The video is only six seconds long and it features Liberal Leader Mark Carney in a blue sweater, telling the viewer that “we will build a Canada that you can afford.” It’s not exciting but, for the Liberals, who are outspending Conservatives on the platform, that’s the point . “They are putting out the most short-form, ‘I’m an inoffensive central banker man,’ ad you could possibly run,” said Cole Hogan, who has worked on digital campaigns for multiple provincial conservative parties and leadership races. “The boomer vote is definitely on Facebook. gen-X- to-boomer is kind of the sweet spot for Facebook. There’s still a millennial contingent there too, which is why the Conservatives have spent so consistently there. But I can see Carney’s Liberals continuing to spend a lot on Facebook,” said Hogan. The battle lines of the election campaign, which culminates with voting on April 28, can be easily seen in how the parties are spending advertising money on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. Hogan has been tracking the spending data and found that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have been pouring money into digital advertising since the writ dropped. Between March 30 and April 5 alone, the Liberals spent $697,000 on Meta ads, while the Conservatives spent $565,000. The NDP spent only $8,000 during that time period, according to Hogan’s data pulled from the platform . With polls showing that older voters have been leaning towards the Liberals since Carney became leader, the digital ad spending has also followed this pattern. The ads on Facebook and Instagram can also be targeted geographically, which gives some clues about where the parties are looking to shore up votes. For example, the ad featuring Carney in his blue sweater was seen by people all over the country, but predominantly in Ontario and British Columbia. Forty-four per cent of people who saw the ad were in Ontario and 20 per cent were in B.C. and Meta estimates that the party has paid somewhere between $125,000 and $150,000 to boost that single ad.

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Hogan said the strategic dilemma facing the Conservatives is well illustrated by the tone and content of the party’s digital advertising. With Carney only officially becoming Liberal leader a month ago, the Conservatives need to run ads that negatively define him in the mind of voters, while also reassuring those same voters that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is a safe choice to lead the country while it faces trade turmoil with the United States. “You have to be able to say, all right, we are equipped to address Donald Trump through our policies but also, Carney sucks. And it’s hard to do both those things at once,” said Hogan. The most popular Conservative ad is a 15-second clip where Poilievre rejects the idea that Canada will ever become the 51st state of the U.S. “Let me be clear, we will never be the 51st state. We will bear any burden and pay any price to protect the sovereignty of our country,” Poilievre says, in a clip from the party’s “Canada First” rally in February . Another popular clip is almost entirely directed at Quebec, where Poilievre admits that his style can be blunt and grating, but that it makes him a good choice to stand up to Trump . Polling suggests that older Canadians are far more likely to be concerned about Trump than younger Canadians and, since Facebook skews older, Hogan said it’s not surprising to see the parties’ addressing the U.S. trade war “A lot of the emotional side of the reaction to the Trump stuff for the boomers is the annexation threats and the tariffs… It just kind of offends their sensibilities,” said Hogan. National Post stthomson@postmedia.com Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.