Youtube the biggest winner in election spend
Youtube was the single biggest channel for election spending during the 2025 campaign, netting close to $26 million in advertising from the political parties.
This is according to Google’s own advertising transparency centre, which showed a total of $25.9 million spent on video advertising on YouTube during the campaign period.
By comparison, Adgile, a Brisbane firm that measures TV advertising spend, found that roughly $54 million in total was spread across Seven, Nine, Paramount, SBS and Foxtel during the same period.
Youtube’s windfall was fuelled by a Labor party splurge: Labor spent the most of any party on the Google-owned video platform, over $9 million, which was three times the amount it spent in the 2022 election.
Albanese tripled his Youtube advertising spend – and won.
Adgile’s analysis found that, across Youtube plus the TV networks, Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots spent the most, with approximately $24.1 million in video spend. Labor came second with a $24 million spend. The Coalition spent $21 million on video advertising, with The Greens spending a more modest $4 million.
Interestingly, Adgile found that the independent parties combined outspent Labor and the Coalition on Youtube advertising, while the two majors trumped the independents in regards to traditional TV spending, making up over $35 million of the $54 million spent on TV advertising between the parties.
Adgile
During the 2022 election, political advertising spend on Youtube was $15.9 million, according to Google’s numbers, hugely inflated by Clive Palmer’s $11.4 million Youtube spending splurge, in honour of his short-lived United Australian Party.
This time around, Palmer actually reined his Youtube spend in, to $7.29 million, which was less than Labor. Likewise, Liberal’s Youtube spend grew from approximately $2 million in 2022, to over $6.5 million.
Curiously, Palmer decided to lean into Snapchat advertising this year, spending a neat $888,000 on the platform. This is despite 55% of its 6.4 million monthly users being under the age of 25. For comparison’s sake, Labour spent $85,000, the Greens just shy of $21,000, while the Coalition wisely avoided the platform altogether.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
Bit condescending? They wouldn’t be advertising to U18s on Snapchat, I don’t love that 18-24s are so easily dismissed by Mumbrella. I get that Clive’s band of incompetents are an easy target, but of all the silly things they’ve done, this doesn’t seem high up on the list.
User ID not verified.
Have your say