If you’re looking for social media’s big political spender, look no further than the White House.
President Donald Trump’s campaign and political action committee combined to spend $274,000 in Facebook ads since early May, becoming the biggest political advertiser on the world’s largest social network, The New York Timesreports, citing a study from New York University researchers. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America landed in second place with more than $188,000 in Facebook ad spend over the period, according to the report.
The ad spending helped the president and his PAC to reach 37 million people over the last couple of months. Planned Parenthood reached 24 million people with its ads, according to the researchers.
Earlier this year, Facebook launched a new service that allows anyone to see political ads, who sponsored them, and how much was spent. The researchers used the database to determine spending by Trump and others. In addition to discussing the top spenders, the researchers shared their findings on which side of the aisle most ads came from.
According to the Times, among the top 449 political ad spenders, 210 of those were left-wing organizations and 124 were right-wing groups. The remaining 115 organizations were politically neutral.
People between the ages of 25 to 34 were most often targeted in the ads. And perhaps not surprisingly, those under 17 and over 65 were least likely to be targeted, according to the researchers.
