Attack messages focusing on the federal government’s most controversial figures — Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Bridget McKenzie — changes to Medicare and the lagging vaccine rollout are being targeted at key seats in a new digital advertising blitz launched by Labor earlier this month.
Crikey analysis of the Australian Labor Party’s Facebook and Google digital advertising spend reveals that it has significantly ramped up the amount of money and number of campaigns against the government for the second half of this year.
On Facebook, it has spent more than $70,000 in the past 28 days to July 28, far more than any other political party or candidate. It had only spent a total of $27,000 since Facebook began reporting expenditure in the 10 months before that.
Similarly, two-thirds of Labor’s spend on Google search and YouTube advertisements since the number started being reported in November 2020 happened this month — more than $12,000.
These ads, which can be viewed on the company’s advertising transparency databases, provide insight into the messages that Labor wants to reach voters in seats it hopes to pick up.
Political parties tend to use social media in two ways. The first is their organic, normal posts on profiles such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In a way that’s not dissimilar to ads on major television networks or widely read newspapers — they are viewed by many. The difference from that on traditional media is that on, say, Facebook the more engagement the ad gets the more people the platform tends to show it to. Parties tend to post messages that they hope will be red meat for their base (in this case, Labor voters) to share into their networks.
The second way is through targeted advertising. Digital advertising allows political parties to narrowly target users based on details like their age, gender, location and interests while providing real-time feedback about how much people are engaging with them. This allows them to pay platforms to help them reach people who may never otherwise engage with their content.
As such, political parties will often run different messages between their organic posts and their digital ads (and within their assortment of digital ads).
In this case, Labor is running multiple campaigns. Its biggest remains about the government’s stunted vaccine rollout, comparing Prime Minister Scott Morrison in videos with US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Another major campaign focuses on Medicare, including both a positive pledge from Labor to “protect Medicare” and a negative “Mediscare” campaign about the government’s changes to the scheme.
Other smaller campaigns focus on the controversial ministerial grant schemes and Labor’s policies of criminalising wage theft, funding the ABC, electric cars and renewable energy. These also show who Labor has identified as political targets among the government. Other than Morrison, Joyce’s reelection to the Nationals leadership features heavily as creating instability. McKenzie and Dutton and their roles in ministerial grant schemes are also named.
While Facebook only reports geographical targeting down to a state level, Google’s transparency library shows it down to the suburb. From this, Labor’s target electorates can be surmised.
For example, it displays that the Labor Party is running micro-targeted ads in the outer suburbs of Perth that overlap with Pearce, Christian Porter’s seat. Other targeted seats include Brisbane (held by LNP) and Newcastle (held by Labor).
With less than a year until the latest possible date for the election and with the Coalition’s support sliding, Labor has begun to step up its spend and sharpen its messages in areas it thinks the government is weakest.
In recent polls, the coalition is seen as better managers. A hard myth to bust. Labor should be using the Covid management as an illustration of their do-nothing management and especially future directions with planned phasing down of petroleum and coal products. Like it or not, other countries will dictate this direction and if Australia doesn’t plan there’s no point being “good economic managers” because there will be no economy to manage
I wish Labor would tackle the ‘better economic managers’ myth head on.
Maybe quotes from respected figures about saving Australia from the GFC, comparisons of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund with Costello frittering away our mining boom etc.
Trouble is they are relatively very poor campaigners . . .
Trying to lodge those deeply rooted myths is so hard!
I used to live in the Barossa, which is one of the safest Liberal seats in Oz.
The Chinese wine embargo has really hit them hard there, so I was chatting to a mate who still lives in Tanunda and asked him if people were angry with the government.
He said they were. I asked him how badly they were feeling the financial pinch, he said winemakers had giant warehouses of wine they couldn’t shift, it was really bad.
“Do you think this may make them change their vote?”
“No”.
I was surprised, I know deep rooted beliefs are hard to shift, but i felt for sure overflowing warehouses of stock and plummeting profits would do it, but according to my mate, he reckons nup. They’ve been voting Liberal for generations, it’s like their second religion.
It will be interesting to see what happens there, come election time. Maybe there are some people you just can’t reach.
Hopefully the less-rusted on voters elsewhere, who still think the Libs are better economic managers, will be swayable when their businesses go bust, they burn thru all their savings, pillage their superannuation and have to go thru the living hell of the Centrelink system.
It’s sad that it has to come to this, but many people only seem to care about stuff when it is personally happening to them. And even then, it has to be happening around election time, or they forget.
Does my head in!!!
Well stated. The people you mentioned remind me of the 60 odd million Americans who will vote for Trump no matter how badly or often he dumps on them.
Know how you feel, I live in a blue ribbon LNP seat in regional Victoria
All and sundry complain about the way this rorted and how it has mismanaged the vaccine, but when the conversation is taken up, it’s apparently all Daniel Andrews fault, go figure!!
sorry, the way this government..
dislodge not lodge
Same as me scratching my head as to why th efarmers keep on viting for the Barnaby rabble who are Coal clients. I think people kjusyt get rusted on like my wife . . . Father was a staunch Lib so she has been for her life, and we are mid 70s . . . .
Hard to accuse Labor of “scare campaigns” after the utter bullcrap spouted by Palmer, to the benefit of the Liberal Party-especially in WA.
It’s equally hard to blame labor of a ‘positive’ nation building campaign. I think they’re in great danger of losing another unloseable election.
Why the hell they havent stuck with some strong positions of difference I have no idea. Shorten nearly got in in spite of murdoch and the lies and bullshit, But the times are VERY different now, with Labor needing to just pick up the leadership baton that’s so desparately missing with the LNP and in particular Morrison.
Doesn’t help that they have a very bland, uninspiring leader.
It’s not negative campaigning – it’s reminding people who knew, and telling people who didn’t, what the government is doing. And it’s good that you put mediscare in mediscare-quotes, but how about not using the now-debunked term at all? Or at least when you use it remind people that this was the term used when the ALP warned people about what the government had already announced they were planning to do.
Pink batts, carbon tax, Mediscare, war on utes, death taxes – all sourced and publicised by a foreign citizen.
Could you stop referring to “Mediscare” please? Criticism of the Government’s changes to Medicare is perfectly valid and it’s not like Labor was wrong when they campaigned on this last time.
As someone who deals with Medicare, I can assure you that the “Mediscare” claims were all true.
The privatizing of the payment section with the numerous cost shifting changes and non payments which result in the private health fund’s non payment are all designed to get the patient to pay twice.
Pay their private health funds and their Medicare levy and then an out of pocket charge as well.
The most galling thing is that every patient who is admitted to a public hospital, as a private health fund member is hounded by the patient liaison officers to sign so that the public system can charge anywhere from $480 to $800 per day for the bed.
Nothing wrong with a mediscare and if it doesn’t work in a pandemic – with Slomo’s vaccine non-rollout – then they’re doing it wrong.
A powerful and possibly winning campaign should feature the absolute rooting by a government who seem arrogant and disregarding of the consequences other than to win. Birmingham espoused that in his rationalisation of the car parks prior to the last election. Audacious in the extreme. The establishment of an effective federal ICAC should be paramount in plans for Labor. Is it too much to plead for transparency and honesty in government?
Not my word choice ‘rooting’ yet appropriate! Should have been rorting.
Why doesn’t Labor really go after the :LNP low talent pool. Morrison, Rorts mckenzie, Barnaby, Porter, Frydenberg (waste of space), Tudge, & dozens of others . . . . .