The government and the opposition are spending big to try to define Anthony Albanese’s reputation in the eyes of voters, a review of Liberal and Labor parties’ post-budget Facebook advertising has revealed.
Last week’s federal budget was the first major set piece for the federal election. Both the Coalition and the Labor Party’s announcements were accompanied by carefully coordinated media strategies to ensure the maximum splash for their cash splashes.
Social media, like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram products which count tens of millions of Australians as users, are an important part of that. Facebook and Instagram offer two ways to reach users: through organic content and paid content which allows advertisers to boost and target their messages.
Political parties use organic posts to get messages to their existing audiences — typically their voting base — and paid advertising to reach users who aren’t already engaging their online presence, like swing voters.
Meta’s Ad Library offers information about what Facebook advertisements are being run by pages, where they’re geographically targeted and at what demographics. An examination of both major parties’ advertisements since the federal budget on March 29 shows that Anthony Albanese is the major figure in post-budget Facebook advertisements from both parties’ Facebook pages.
Labor’s Facebook advertisements feature Albanese front-and-centre to promote its alternative budget policies. Slickly produced videos and photographs of the Labor leader speaking about its initiatives, with B-roll talking to parents in playgrounds, and tradies at work and farmers in their fields make up the majority of the ads. They all focus on its announcements and don’t mention the government.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Liberal Party is running negative advertisements about Albanese. Its messages, which use a combination of graphics and clips from the media, frame him as a high-taxing leader and a risky choice without convictions.
Other than a few advertisements featuring Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, the rest spruik the government’s economic achievements and new budget measures in simple graphics. Scott Morrison is nowhere to be seen.
During this period, Labor is outspending the Liberals two-to-one with upwards of $100,000 spent on showing nearly 900 different advertisements to more than 3 million Facebook users through the Anthony Albanese and Australian Labor Party Facebook pages. The Liberal Party’s 128 advertisements, costing up to $46,000, have been seen by more than 3.7 million Australians.
With only a few weeks until polling day, the parties are racing to frame Albanese as either a future prime minister or a high-taxing politician who stands for nothing. Their post-budget social media advertising blitz marks the first shots in all-out election warfare.
How to define Albo? Easy: his most appealing quality is that he’s not Morrison.
Rather than be the Invisible Man, he should be the Negative Man?
Is slightly less appalling than the Other bloke really a winning tactic?
‘Is slightly less appalling than the Other bloke really a winning tactic?’
I suspect for many voters it will be.
Until it isn’t. Until there’s so much damage and fear and pain and anger, the far right demagogue strolls in and promises to capitalise on every hatred and fear instilled in the electorate over decades. Then we’re off to the races.
Worked for Howard in 1996. I’m not Paul Keating, I want you to feel comfortable and relaxed and I will never ever introduce a GST.
It worked for Tony Abbott.
His weak attempts at looking smug don’t seem to be causing him problems.
That was Hillary Clinton’s strategy for far, far too long – a smug, arrogant insistence that not being that man was enough and working class people had nowhere else to go, anyway. By the time the Democrats snapped out of it and faced reality – hello, President Trump!
Couldn’t happen here, of course. No way the implosion of the LNP we’re watching in real time could produce someone like that.
Albanese is in no way smug or arrogant; Hillary Clinton is the epitome of those words.
I’m going to cop it for this, but I can’t help myself.
Albo, Laura Tingle wants her glasses back.
The spending by the LNP is on the taxpayer dollars because the election hasn’t been called yet.
It is odd that so much emphasis is placed on the leaders of the parties.
The PM is not a president, few of us vote for that particular candidate, and only then as an MP.
Unfortunately the media are only obsessed with the campaign faces and their travel arrangements.
With the average voter spending more time on their footy tips than who leads the nation, we have had a Presidential style of election for many years .
Yep. It’s all about the horse race. More and more so in the absence of actual policy.
The sooner we have truth in political advertising laws and a proper federal integrity commission that better. The tories have really gone out on the lying limb with these baseless attacks on Albo, all of which better describe the lying muppet government and especially it liar in chief..