Facebook: Trump, Clinton Spent $81M On Election Ads

Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience.

While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns’ behalf.

According to Techcrunch, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch revealed these figures Wednesday during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s second days of hearings with Facebook, Twitter and Google about Russian election interference.

Without counting PACs, the top campaigns spent 1,760X more on election ads than one group of Russian meddlers puts the situation into context. The IRA ad buy was small by comparison. This aligns with Stretch’s main talking point that Russian propaganda content was a tiny fraction of the content and ads seen on Facebook. This revelation could put more focus on organically posted propaganda.