Brexit
How Facebook ads are influencing the Brexit debate.
1Spend Over Time
First, let's see how the ad spend has changed over time.
Spending spiked in May 2019 in the lead up to the European elections. The People's Vote and Britain's Future pages have spent much less after the European elections than before. However, other communities such as HOPE not hate, have spent more.
2Spend by Age
We can also take a closer look at the distribution of ads by age group.
The majority of users targeted by 'We Are The 52%' are over 55. Remain United, The European Parliament and the HOPE not hate community prefer to target younger audiences.
3Spend by Gender
We can also look at the distribution by gender.
We Are The 52% has the highest male percentage audiences. Remain United and Best For Britain have the highest female percentage split.
4Spend by Demographic
This figure shows us how the pages target different user groups.
On average, Remain United target the youngest and most female audience. Conversely, the We Are The 52% ads are shown to a mostly older, male audience.
5Spend by Region
Next, we can see how ad spend has been distributed across various regions of the UK.
The majority of ad budget is targeted at users in England, particular by People's Vote UK. Best for Britain has directed relatively more ad spend towards Scotland than average.
6Top Regional Spender by Month
With this interactive chart, we can see which page has spent the most in each month since October 2018.
In September 2019, the HOPE not hate pages have spent the most in England and Wales, whilst Best for Britain has spent the most in Scotland, though still a comparatively small amount. The People's Vote page spent £102k on ads shown to English Facebook users in December 2018.
7Spend and Ad Quantity
Finally, let's look at a summary of spend and number of ads displayed since October 2018, by the highest spending Brexit themed Facebook pages.
Overall, total spend is led by the two pro-remain pages (Best for Britain and People's Vote), and one pro-leave page (Britain's Future). The European Parliament is the fourth largest spender in this analysis, though across comparatively fewer ads.