Clive Palmer outspending the major parties by millions
The Labor and Liberal parties have spent millions of dollars mounting their federal election campaign, but their pockets don’t go as deep as Clive Palmer’s.
From January 1 to April 15, the Labor party has spent $3.97 million on digital advertising across all Google and Meta platforms, which include Google search, Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook. This also includes a modest $6,300 spend on Snapchat, a platform with a largely underage userbase.
The Liberal Party has been more modest with its advertising spend, shelling out $2.08 million across the same platform, avoiding any Snap spend.
Liberal attack ad
Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots party, however, has leant into Snap advertising, spending $610,680 on the platform. The party has also spent $3.48 million on Google platforms, and just $218,964 on Meta properties. This is a total digital spend, to date, of $4.31 million.
This is just digital spend. According to independent media monitoring service Canda, Trumpet of Patriots has spent over $3.5 million on metro (capital city) newspaper advertisements, including a controversial run of 14 front-page adverts that ran across major mastheads such as The Age, The Australian, Daily Telegraph, The West Australian, and the Sydney Morning Herald during a week-long blitz in early March.
In addition, Palmer has spent over $4.1 million on television advertising in the metro markets, and a further $123,000 in metro radio ads, with pricing based on average rates.
For comparison’s sake, Labor has spent $1.71 million on metro TV advertising, and approximately $824,000 on metro radio, while the Libs have spent a relatively modest $622,500 on metro TV, and $522,650 on radio ads. No reliable newspaper spend for the two major parties was available at the time of publication.
Labor attack ad
It’s worth repeating these TV and radio figures are for metro publications only, meaning any spend in the regions is excluded. Given the massive push in country Australia by the Trumpet of Patriots — a number of their Meta advertisements are targeted at the Hunter region, for example, where party leader Suellen Wrightson is the party’s endorsed candidate — these figures are modest at best.
Advertising spend will also ramp up considerably as we move towards May, if the 2022 federal election is any indication.
During the two months before the 2022 election, the Labor Party spent over $5 million on Meta platforms, with the Liberal Party spending over $3 million.
Overall spend by all political parties during the lead up to the 2022 federal election sat at a massive $418 million.
The Coalition spent $132 million overall, while the Labor party spent $116 million.
Clive Palmer’s former party, United Australia, shelled out $123 million to land just one seat in the Senate, while independents collectively spent about $21 million on the 2022 campaign.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Disappointed Trumpet of Patriots aren’t running a candidate in my seat – I was looking forward to putting them last.
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