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Donald Trump spent £54m on Facebook campaign to help him win US presidential election
Donald Trump spent £54 million on a Facebook campaign that helped him win the US presidential election, it has emerged.
Those behind his campaign and the team who masterminded the Brexit vote have both said Facebook was a decisive factor in their respective victories.
Their claims are made in a BBC1 Panorama programme to be broadcast on Monday, and mark the first time either campaign has attributed its success to the social network.
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In the programme, Gary Coby, director of advertising for the Republican Party, said the Trump campaign spent about £54 million on Facebook in the run-up to the election.
‘The way we bought media on Facebook was like no one else in politics has ever done,’ he said.
The Trump campaign used Facebook to pinpoint specific messages at targeted voters online.
‘We take the name, address, phone number, email and we can take those pieces of data and send it on to Facebook,’ said Mr Coby.
‘Facebook then matches them to the user’s profile. So if you are on Facebook, I can match you and put you into a bucket of users that I can then target.’
In the UK, Gerry Gunster, a political strategist from the Brexit campaign Leave.EU, told Panorama how Facebook had been pivotal to success in the 2016 referendum.
He said: ‘You can say to Facebook, I would like to make sure that I can micro-target that fisherman in certain parts of the UK so that they are specifically hearing that if you vote to leave that you will be able to change the way regulations are set for the fishing industry.
‘I can do the same thing for people who live in the Midlands who are struggling because the factory has shut down. So I may send a specific message through Facebook to them that nobody else sees.’
Panorama said Facebook had teams of staff working directly with both Democrat and Republican campaigns during the US presidential election.
Simon Milner, Facebook’s head of policy UK, said: ‘One of the things we are absolutely there to do is to help people make use of Facebook products.
‘We do have people whose role is to help politicians and governments make good use of Facebook.’
A quarter of the world’s population use Facebook, including 32 million in the UK.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said Facebook needs to be more accountable.
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