Bangladesh Election Social Media Spend Hits Millions

Following the announcement of the schedule for the 13th National Parliamentary Election, political parties spent significant amounts on Facebook between December 25 and January 23, according to analysis from Meta’s Ad Library under the “Social Issues, Elections, and Politics” category. During this period, $52,411—approximately 6.4 million BDT—was spent on political content across 112 Facebook pages where spending exceeded $100. Overall, the total expenditure on Facebook political promotion is estimated at around $75,000, approaching the 100 million BDT mark.

During the same period, the Election Commission Secretariat spent $217 (around 26,000 BDT) on 92 awareness-raising advertisements.

The report shows that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) candidates led the spending among political parties, candidates’ personal pages, and slogan-driven pages. Hummam Quader Chowdhury, candidate for Chittagong-7, spent over $4,200 (more than 500,000 BDT) on his personal Facebook page in one month.

Overall, the BNP spent 2.5 times more than Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Across 50 pages and 224 ads, the BNP spent $30,916 (approximately 3.78 million BDT). Jamaat-e-Islami, through 33 pages and 739 ads, spent $11,222 (around 1.36 million BDT), with the highest individual page spend being $1,447 (176,000 BDT) from the page “Jamaat Dhaka-15, Mirpur-Kafrul”, representing candidate Amir Shafiqur Rahman. Additionally, Islami Andolan ran 80 ads during this period.

Among the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the highest expenditure was from candidate Nabila Tasnida’s page for Dhaka-20, totaling $707 (86,000 BDT). Among independent candidates, M. A. H. Selim, contesting three seats in Bagerhat, spent $1,900 (231,000 BDT).

DBTech/PAN/EK/OR