A digital marketing strategist, Maximus Ametorgoh says the amount of money invested in political advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook will increase by 200% percent in the next election season.
This comes after political parties spent over GHS1.3 million on Facebook political ads between August and December this year to boost their chances of winning the 2020 elections.
While the Greater Accra Region received the highest spend of $121,932 for the period, the Ashanti region saw $61,440 worth of Facebook political ads being deployed in the stronghold of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The stronghold of the National Democratic Congress on the other hand saw only $1,668 being spent on Facebook political ads.
Speaking on the amount spent on this year’s elections by way of Facebook political ads, Digital Marketing Strategist Maximus Amertogoh said the amount is significant, but he expects a 200 percent jump in the next election season.
“Next election cycle I expect an increase of over 200 percent in ad spend. Because you can see the reflection and impact of the ads on the ground. If you have a page like Mahama 2020 spending about $65,000 with majority of that amount being spent in Greater Accra Region and the turn out of the elections, you will expect other players to take note in the next election cycle.”
Speaking on the possibility of traditional means of advertising suffering as a result of the growing importance of social media in political campaigning, Mr. Amertogoh said he expects a hybrid system to develop going forward.
“Of course people are reducing budget from traditional media and investing into digital media, but it is not at the scale where you would deny traditional media their share. What you will see going forward is a hybrid scenario where campaigns are carried out both on TV, radio and in the newspapers, supported by parallel campaigns on digital platforms.”
In terms of the pages on Facebook that churned out political ads, Mahama 2020 led the pack with $65,120 dollars’ worth of adverts, followed by the Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo’s Facebook page which spent $53,598 dollars during the period in question.
Other notable pages for individuals such as George Opare Addo, Rebecca Akufo-Addo and the NDC’s Vice Presidential candidate Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang spent about $3,000 dollars plus in political adverts on Facebook.
