Elon Musk’s Pac is spending much more on ads on Facebook and YouTube than on X, Musk’s own social network.
America Pac paid $201,000 to run dozens of ads on X, formerly Twitter, over the past three months. However, it spent $3 million on thousands of ads on Facebook and Instagram in roughly the same time period. Musk founded the pro-Donald Trump Pact in July and has funded it to the tune of $75 million, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
From July 8 to October 1, 85 days, America Pac spent more than $166,000 on 59 ads in X, according to political ad disclosures reported by cabling. After Musk commandeered the @America handle for Pac on October 7, he spent approximately $34,000 on X ads. Bloomberg reported. The ads targeted several swing states (Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin), but focused primarily on Pennsylvania. They have generated approximately 32 million impressions, according to Wired.
Compare those numbers to America Pac’s ad buys on Facebook. From July 22 to October 19, a 90-day period, the organization spent more than $3 million to run 1,910 ads there, doubling some on Instagram, according to Meta’s Ad Library. America Pac paid to show ads to users in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona.
About a dozen America Pac ads received more than 1 million impressions. Others got hundreds of thousands. The ads meta-library does not provide an aggregate number of impressions for individual advertisers, which complicates a direct comparison with ads in X.
Musk’s Pac is also spending big at Google, which owns YouTube. Since the beginning of July, America Pac has spent $1.5 million on 251 ads on Google and its affiliate, 10 times more than Pac has spent on X, according to Google’s Ads Transparency Center. The Pac spent 80% of that money on video ads and most of the ads were shown in Georgia, according to Google disclosures.
Musk has more than 200 million followers on X. With so many followers, he can speak to a huge audience without having to pay. He often retweets America Pac’s posts. Less than 7,000 people follow Pac.
The spending on Facebook speaks to Musk’s shift in geographic focus. Audience data in Meta’s ad library shows that the largest percentage of America Pac’s ads over the past 90 days have targeted North Carolina. However, in the last seven days, the bulk of the ads (more than 25%) were aimed at Pennsylvania, where Musk himself has been conducting most of his campaigning in person.
Facebook allows advertisers to refine their audiences by targeting users who have interacted with similar pages. America Pac goes after users interested in Kelsey Grammer, trophy hunting, Kid Rock, the Boy Scouts of America, and Joe Rogan, among other things.
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Since purchasing Twitter and rebranding it as X in 2022, Musk has touted its ad offerings and app store performance. Advertising still accounted for 70% to 75% of X’s total revenue in 2023, Bloomberg reported, despite Musk’s introduction of a subscription product, Twitter Blue. The company made just $2.5 billion in revenue in 2023, a decline of nearly half from the previous year, primarily due to a drop in advertising dollars.
Musk has also poured money into in-person events. Over the weekend, he pledged to donate $1 million a day until the election to registered voters who sign America Pac’s petition. He’s been handing out the awards in the form of giant novelty checks held at rallies in Pennsylvania over the past few days.