A bunch of new Reform "stop the boats" ads launched on Facebook over the last 24hrs.

Here's the spending share for the final week before the Mayoral by-election. Feels like a big miss from the Greens to spend so much for just 12% (and elimination) in the first round. They're usually more conservative in deploying resources when they're not going to win.

Although the Greens spent a lot on digital ads in Manchester, Restore were the biggest spending party on polling day itself.

New Labour digital ad campaign going straight for the informal style Burnham has tried to cultivate. First name only, no tie, "sign up to hear from me". Will be interesting to see how they balance the personal brand vs. the promise of a more inclusive government and party.

"Farage" vs. "Binface" keyword mentions in Meta political ads shows no contest - it's 98% to 2% since the start of July. But... the majority of Farage mentions are from his opponents.

Farage's limited campaign (due to a lack of rivals) in Clacton has ramped up (a bit) with two video ads framing his arguments for calling the by-election (half "standing up to the establishment", half "letting voters clear me of any wrongdoing over getting £5m from Christopher Harborne")

That was then, but they stopped after a few days and haven't picked up again since, so feels like they know their fate.

Notable moment here - on the 15th of July, for the first time, Restore Britain bought more political social media ads than any of the other parties.

The Green Party are already spending heavily online for the Manchester Mayoral by-election. No one else has started yet. Generally the party only spends when they think they'll win.

The Makerfield by-election is still a week away, but Labour is already starting to set the scene with digital ads for the Greater Manchester Mayoral by-election that's likely to follow it.

Reform ad spend in Makerfield (the local party page + Rob Kenyon's) isn't very high at the moment, and might even be tailing off. Leading indicator for their expectations next Thursday?

Experimenting with a new tool to track the relative prominence of keywords in political ad campaigns on Meta. E.g. here showing that, in the US, ads including "data centers" are currently more prominent than ones about "gas prices"

After the Milburn report on young people's employment and training prospects was published last week, Reform launched ads on the topic, targeting the under-25s .

Restore are outspending Reform on Meta in the constituency at the moment (though still being outspent by Labour and Andy Burnham). It's by far the most they've ever spent on digital ads, clearly seeing this as their moment in the sun, and a chance to give Farage a bloody nose.

Rupert Lowe's Restore are campaigning heavily in Makerfield, and it's obvious that's now pushing Reform further right in their messaging. It's the first time they've talked about "mass deportations" in paid ads.

These list building ads from Reform have been running for the last week. They've spent nearly £10k on them and reached over a million people on Facebook and Instagram.

Labour Future did spend some cash on these - were they what you saw?

£900 isn't a huge amount of money in the world of social media ads, but it's notable Reform is the only party continuing to spend *after* the local elections (this data from May 12th). Everyone else came to a dead stop the second the polls closed.

The EU's Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) Regulation is starting to roll out in more countries. In Ireland, each party has built their own political ad library. Transparency is welcome, and potentially useful, but... there are *thousands* of political parties in the EU.

BBC Scotland built a "who should I vote for?" tool and promoted it on Facebook on election eve and polling day, spending over £4,000. Facebook decided it was a political ad and took it down, because the BBC hadn't been through their advertiser verification process.

The degree to which Reform's digital ads are centralised is really extraordinary. 95%+ of their cash goes through the main party or Nigel Farage's page. All the other parties spend across many accounts, with the biggest pages maxxing out at 30-40% of total spend.

Getting close to £2.5m spent on digital ads during the local, Scottish and Welsh elections. Simultaneous elections + lots of competition = expensive.

Reform have so much money right now they're running ads announcing victories AFTER the campaign is over.

They don't buy any advertising on YouTube at all! Labour is way, way ahead there.

Breaking that down a bit... If you focus on the big, centrally controlled party pages on Meta, Reform is actually ahead. But...

UK local election digital ad spend (month to May 2nd, with a few more days of data still to roll in) - £1.8m total. 1,200 active advertisers. Labour £875k (400 active accounts), Reform £259k (70 accounts), Tories £246k (360). trends.whotargets.me/reports/7e7c...

Even independents aren't safe from a targeted Reform Facebook ad.

Reform is now running a digital ad for each and every rival for this week's elections. British political fragmentation writ large on the nation's social media feeds.

And here's another variant of the campaign, making the promise (threat) explicit.

This is the "Vote Green, Get Illegals" ad Reform are running across 2,179 postcode areas in the UK today.