Global Courant
Advertisements promoting Canada’s 150th anniversary, annual budgets and veteran relief efforts were among the largest items in the federal government’s social media ad spend over the past seven years, according to an analysis by CBC News.
CBC surveyed some federal departments after obtaining a departmental spending document. The document was drafted in response to a question from Conservative MP Michael Cooper in the House of Commons last January.
One of the largest donors was the Department of Canadian Heritage, which paid Facebook more than $1 million in 2017 alone when it promoted Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations. It has spent more than $500,000 combined in the other years since 2016.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced that the government will suspend all of its social media spending on Meta-owned platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
Rodriguez announced the ad suspension after Meta threatened to block Canadian news links in response to the government’s Online News Act, C-18, passed last month.
The Online News Act forces online media companies like Meta and Google to pay money to news organizations every time a user opens a story through a link on one of their products.
“Facebook has decided to be unreasonable and irresponsible,” Rodriguez said. While Google has also threatened to block Canadian news links, Rodriguez has said his government is still negotiating with that company.
In a statement to CBC News, his department said the 2017 spending to promote Canada 150 was part of a year-long campaign and that Facebook is “one of the most popular used platforms in Canada.”
Government purchases of Google ads are not listed separately in the document released to Cooper because he did not request that breakdown. Google and YouTube, the video platform of the same company, appear a few times in a category that lumps some social media platforms together.
In 2021, Transport Canada spent $6,060.74 on Google Ads for a drone safety advertising campaign.
Fisheries and Oceans, the Communications Security Establishment, and the Department of Finance have all spent money on YouTube between 2016 and now.
Fireworks light up the sky behind the Peace Tower during the evening ceremonies for Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017. That year, the Heritage Department spent more than $1 million on Facebook ads that year. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
A note from Finance in 2017 described a $74,833.13 YouTube ad purchase as a promotion for Budget 2017 and “the newly redesigned Canadian Child Benefit”.
Facebook and Instagram received the lion’s share of the government’s social media spending. The document reported at least $56 million in federal government ad spending for the Meta platforms since 2016.
Finance has spent nearly $2 million on meta platforms between 2016 and now.
Then-Treasury Secretary Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a news conference in Stoutffville, Ont. in 2017. That year, the finance department spent $74,833.13 on YouTube promoting changes to Canadian child support. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)
When asked at a press conference on Thursday where that money went, Treasury Secretary Chrystia Freeland instead spoke of the importance of taking on US “tech giants”.
“The work Secretary Rodriguez is doing, that our government is doing, to make sure our tech giants pay their fair share and support Canadian newsrooms is absolutely vital,” she said.
A separate annual report prepared by the Treasury Board of Canada estimated the federal government’s advertising spend on meta-platforms between 2017 and 2022 at just over $40 million.
The Canada Energy Regulator also spent $1,499.37 on advertising on the Meta platform in 2017.
“We ran Facebook ads to promote public participation in the Energy East hearing,” the regulator told CBC News in a media statement, adding that Facebook was preferred over other venues because it was “the best platform to reach people which may be heard by the.”
TikTok ad spend rose before the government ban
The Treasury Board’s annual report shows an increase in government spending on the TikTok platform.
Ottawa hasn’t touched the platform between the year it was founded – 2016 – and when it really took off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020-2021, the federal government spent at least $377,019 on TikTok marketing. In 2021-2022, that amount skyrocketed to $1,717,617.
Although the federal government banned TikTok from all government devices in February due to security concerns, it has never officially stated that it would stop advertising on the platform, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. Critics have warned that the Chinese government could lean on ByteDance to access users’ private data, a claim the company says is unfounded.
The Treasury Board’s annual report lists only departments that spent more than $25,000 on a single ad campaign; smaller ad purchases do not need to be approved by public services and procurement.
Departments that spent less than $25,000 on individual contracts added up the cost of those campaigns in the answer to Cooper’s question.
The largest TikTok publisher of those was Veterans Affairs, which has paid $92,334 to the company since 2021.
An ad for TikTok at Union Station in Washington, DC on April 3, 2023. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
Veterans Affairs also spent nearly $2.5 million on Meta between 2016 and now, according to the document.
A Veterans Affairs spokesperson said the department has two major spending campaigns each year — one focused on Veterans Week in November and another promoting veterans’ mental health from mid-December to February.
The federal government has not responded to questions about whether it plans to stop buying ads on TikTok.
It’s also not clear where Ottawa now plans to spend the money that no longer goes to Facebook or Instagram.
“We’re going to reinvest it. We’re not going to keep it. We’re going to reinvest it in big campaigns, but we’ll come back to that,” Rodriguez told reporters. go to traditional media outlets.
As a news organization, the CBC could see a financial benefit under C-18, which requires the CBC to report annually on any compensation for news it receives from digital operators.
