Victorian Labor's multi-million-dollar social media ad spend revealed

Victorian Labor is pouring millions into its online political advertising, with new analysis suggesting the party has spent more than five times as much as the Liberals in the lead-up to the state election.

But despite an online cash splash that dwarfs its competitors, some analysts say the ruling party and Premier Ben Carroll are fighting for relevance online.

Labor is competing for attention against a slick Liberal social media campaign and social algorithms that advantage controversial content.

Estimates compiled by digital campaign platform Populares show a $3.1 million spend from Victorian Labor HQ and candidates since August, compared to just over $500,000 from the Liberals.

The ad spend data also reveals how little One Nation's Victorian party has spent on online advertising in Victoria — just over $21,000 — despite polling at a historic high in the state.

The figures are an upper-range estimate based on platform disclosures, and exclude spending on other forms of political advertising such as TV and physical advertising.

The ABC contacted Victorian Labor, the Liberals and the Greens to verify the accuracy of the estimates but did not receive a response.

Premier who?

One of Labor's major headaches this election is the need to introduce voters to Premier Ben Carroll, who has held the position for a little more than 100 days since he took the role from Jacinta Allan.

Analysts say cultivating an online presence takes time and Ben Carroll has not had it.

The lack of social media transparency tools for non-paid content makes it hard to objectively measure online engagement or reach of Victorian politicians and candidates.

Populares chief executive Ed Coper, who has previously worked on political campaigns for advocacy groups including GetUp, explains that tracking non-paid content "is a lot of guesswork".

But some political observers, including La Trobe University politics researcher Phoebe Hayman, have noticed more organic engagement for right-of-centre and far-right parties in this election.

Younger Liberal politicians cultivate votes online

Liberal MP for Warrandyte Nicole Werner spent her first term in opposition posting explainer and skit-style videos, drawing an online following that she believes has convinced voters, including those who might feel disconnected from politics.

"If you look at that in terms of reach in the last financial year, we had 70 million views and 7 million individual viewers," the 35-year-old said.

Ms Werner said using social media to connect with voters where they were was helping the Liberals in the election race.

Researcher Ms Hayman said Liberal Leader Jess Wilson had a year to build her presence on social media, which had grown into "a really strong disparity" between the premier and his challenger across multiple social media platforms.

To use Instagram followers as an example (which is not a perfect measure and can be manipulated by fake accounts or bots), Ben Carroll's count pales in comparison to other Victorian politicians and is growing more slowly.

That is despite the estimated $42,000 ad spend by his personal pages on Meta (Jess Wilson's estimate is $32,000).

As a contrast, at the last election, recontesting premier Daniel Andrews was a social media celebrity with more than 1 million followers across platforms.

There is now no such correlation between political power and social media following.

One Nation spends a little online, but reaches a lot

The skew of the algorithm towards divisive or "rage bait" content can be an effective strategy for online engagement of candidates, but there are still unknowns about whether it actually swings votes or the feeling it leaves voters with.

Mr Coper said One Nation's leaning towards "culture war" content negated the need to buy ads online (its spend amounted to just 0.4 per cent of the total tracked spend by Victorian political and third-party lobby groups).

"The reason they can do that is because their content is so heavily favoured by the algorithm that a lot of people see it organically," Mr Coper said.

Sticking with the Instagram example, One Nation Victoria's party page, which is under three years old, has more followers than Victorian Labor and Liberals combined.

Again, it is no perfect measure. We can not verify if those followers are authentic and there are previously reported concerns about the role of foreign accounts distributing One Nation content, with Mr Coper warning it was "incredibly cheap and easy" to manipulate statistics.

Victoria's election 'watershed' moment on AI political content

Another feature of the online campaign this election has been a deluge of AI-generated political content.

"I've never seen an Australian election with such widespread use of AI content and deepfakes as this one," said Bill Brown, the democracy director for The Australia Institute.

The content includes Liberal campaign videos showing an AI-generated Ben Carroll sleeping, or a controversial Labor AI ad posted on Halloween that depicts Jess Wilson and One Nation Leader Warren Pickering trick-or-treating.

Mr Coper described this Victorian election as a "watershed" moment on AI, with one AI researcher describing the ad as "a step beyond what we have seen in the past".

Swinburne University's Lucas Whittaker said while misrepresentation in political ads was not new, and not illegal in Victoria, the affect of "using AI to really generate the likeness and speech of the opposition and putting words into their mouth" was not fully understood.

Dr Whittaker said there were concerns it could further degrade trust in politics, fuel social division and "reality apathy".

The Victorian Greens have joined transparency advocates, including The Australian Institute, calling for truth in advertising and AI rules around elections, which exist in South Australia and New South Wales.

Truth in political advertising laws had not been implemented in Victoria, despite being recommended by a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry in 2022 and earning in-principle support from the Labor government.

Dr Whittaker is working with a team to try to monitor the affects of AI-generated Victorian election content on voters, but the findings will not be known until well after the election result.

Analysts also cautioned that content that gets clicks, followers and engagements is never a genuine proxy for who is winning votes.

La Trobe University's Ms Hayman said research suggested the fight for attention online, including AI and humour, could come at a cost.

"A lot of the ways that we know politicians can most effectively increase engagement … are not necessarily particularly good for democracy,"

she said.

While online engagement can "bring a lot of attention", she warned that without enough substance, voters might decide to "turn off".