Between 2019 and 2023, parties spent 100 million lei on online advertising on political, electoral and social issues. The most money went to Facebook and Instagram – 80 million lei, followed by Google and YouTube – 18 million lei. More than half of this money was spent by PSD, PNL and USR, Expert Forum reports.

However, according to the Expert Forum, online advertising is a tiny part of political advertising. In 2023, parties spent 110 million lei on press and propaganda from subsidies in the first 11 months, but no more than 9 million can be found in Facebook’s ad library.

Also, since 2021, more than 273 million lei have been spent on propaganda from subsidies, which is significantly more than online advertising. This fact indicates that most of the advertising funds are not spent on advertising campaigns in social networks, but on websites, television and radio, writes Expert Forum. .

The pinnacle of online communication

EFOR has published two analytical reports that illustrate how money was spent on political and campaign advertising between 2019 and 2023 via Facebook and Google, as well as the main themes shared by political parties and politicians in the past year.

USR invested the most in online communications, followed by PNL and PSD. USR is also in the top 10 pages of the USR-Plus Alliance, President Katalin Drula and the “No Punishment in Public Functions” campaign.

In contrast, PNL registered the largest number of ads on Facebook – more than 70,000 ads.

then the PNL, USR and PSD pages.

The pages of President Marcel Čolaku were also included in the category of PSD pages.

Most of the money was used to reach users in Bucharest

In the period 2019-2023, the parties spent the most money to reach Facebook users in Bucharest (15%) and counties with important municipalities such as Cluj, Iași, Constanta or Timișoara. The counties where the parties have invested the least are those in the area of ​​influence of the UDMR (Covasna, Harghita, Mures, etc.), as well as Tulcea or Giurgiu.

• PSD spent the most money in Bucharest (12%), followed by Constanta, Brasov, Iași and Bacău counties (4%). Kovasna, Salai and Harghita attracted the least attention (0.6-0.7%).
• PNL spent 14% in Bucharest, 5% in Maramures and 4% each in Iasi, Cluj and Mures.
• USR spent 14% in Bucharest, Iasi (6%), Maramures 5% and Constanta, Brasov, Prahova (4%). The least was spent in Covasni, Tulcea and Giurgiu.
• UDMR spent almost all the money in Hargit (26%), Mures (18%), Cluj (12%), Covasna, Satu Mare and Bihor (9% each).
• AUR spent the most money in Bucharest (12%), Suceava (8%), Arad (6%), Hunedoara, Ilfov and Timisoara respectively (4%). The least money was spent in Bistrita Năsăud, Covasna and Giurgiu.

Top 10 online pages of politicians

Among the top online politicians we find George Simeon both on Facebook with 1.3 million followers and on TikTok with 399,000 followers and 5.7 million likes.

The most popular published content is manifesto, party content (caravan, GOLD bag) and personal content. Video is what makes it so popular with 54 million views on Facebook alone in 2023.

PSD Marcel Čolaku and Gabriela Firea are among the 10 most popular political pages.

While Gabriela Firea’s content is almost exclusively personal, family, after her release, Marcel Cholaku takes a clear position in 2023.

Most of the popular posts are about election measures the party sees as important, such as a ban on flour containing insects, the welfare of small and medium-sized businesses and tougher drink-driving laws.

At the same time, PSD’s official page has content directed against Nikušor Dan and posts promoting the need to clarify the Bîstroe scandal created by its own minister, Sorin Grindeanu.

Top Romanian mayors

Mayors are among the most popular political pages in Romania, those in the top 10 have more interactions than most politicians in government and parliament. Local publicity is a very powerful tool for informing the public about the party, political positions and attitude to events of state importance, the report says.

The account of Christian Popescu Piedone is currently one of the most popular accounts of politicians in the country, taking the 3rd place in the overall top before the Prime Minister of Romania in terms of the total number of interactions.

In second place is Dominik Fritz, the mayor of the city of Timișoara since 2020, followed by the mayor of the capital Nikušor Dan. Starting in 2023, Nikusor’s account registers a positive trend where most content with ongoing or completed projects has changed tone in the online environment.

In fourth place is the mayor of Cluj, Emil Bock, followed by Daniel Beluce, mayor of Sector 2 in Bucharest.

The parties have different promotion strategies

The parties had different promotion strategies such as visual methods and targeting metrics. Google used images (55%) and videos (40%) more often. Both in the case of Facebook and Google, most of the money was concentrated in Bucharest, as well as in several counties with important municipalities, such as Cluj, Brasov, Iași or Timișoara.

On Facebook, expenses for the main pages of the parties make up 20-30% of the total expenses. In most parliamentary parties, a lot was also invested in the pages of leaders or former leaders, but in the case of the PNL, this trend is not so noticeable.

At the same time, no money was invested in the page SOS Romania or Diana Șoșoacă, and AUR gave relatively little.

The report shows that some politicians who have a lot of followers or a lot of interactions are not necessarily the ones who invest a lot of money.

Publications that excessively promote certain parties

According to the report, a number of publications were found to be excessively promoting certain parties. The analysis identifies several such pages that support AUR as well as other parties such as PSD, PNL or USR/Plus.

Among the most active distributors of political advertising are a number of publications, such as:

• Power newspaper,
• Newsweek Romania,
• Governare.net,
• Politics.net
• Letters.net.

The latter three tend to promote content written by other publications, which may mean they can pick up certain political topics at the behest of parties. Litere.net and Politice.net are owned by Stative Media, which had contracts with PSD12.

In the case of Litere.net, only a third of the promoted links are related to the site, the rest go to pages such as stiripesurse.ro, g4media.ro or libertatea.ro.

Readblog.news had the same behavior, promoting links to other publications, but is no longer active.

Another account, NewsFalcon, which does not have a website, posted 56 ads worth 81,629 lei, all of which linked to articles from other publications.

The salvamromania.org page spent 366,000 lei on 276 advertisements linked to a wide variety of publications (including its own website) that seem to favor USR-PLUS.

The page of the Group of Political Investigations (GIP headed by Mugur Chuvica) spent 259,000 lei on 160 ads.

The Online Report page published 106 ads worth 76,343 lei with links both on its own page and to online publications – it should be noted that https://on-report.com has publications up to 2020, which seem to support PNL, while the campaign lasts until 2023.

Also, since 2021, more than 273 million lei have been spent on propaganda from subsidies, which is significantly more than online advertising. This fact tells us that the majority of promotional money is not going to social media campaigns, but to websites, TV and radio.

The most popular posts in the field of disinformation

The main narratives in the field of disinformation are centered around a radical, often anti-European and anti-American discourse.

At the peak of the popularity of this type of content, we have Luis Lazarus TV, George Simion, Claudio Tarziou, Cristian Terjes, Diana Shoshoake and Ana Maria Gavrila. Messages sent on AUR channels related to the EU have much more vague language.