Cost of advertising on Facebook (FOI)

Request

Please provide, for the last 5 years, a list of promoted, sponsored or advertising Facebook posts by the States Assembly and by the Government of Jersey along with the cost specifically for each post. 

Please break down the spend into the individual posts, list the Facebook post, a summary of its content, and the amount of money spend on the promotion of that post. 

For the avoidance of doubt, this should include for the above example:

• The approximate date of the Facebook Advert
  
• The content of the advert. For example, Battle of flowers Petition - Petition - Ban the use of real flowers on floats in the Battle of Flowers parade (petitions.gov.je)
  
• If a petition, the number of signatures of that petition, if not a petition then the statistics on clicks purchased by the advert, the results if you will 
• The total cost of the advert/promotion paid to Facebook
• The budget within Government/States assembly that this cost was from
• Who approved that specific advert (ok, so I know you are going to cop out of that as you don't like naming individuals, so let’s go with a department or role). 

Furthermore, please detail the rules and process that is followed by States Assembly when deciding to pay money to promote petitions on Facebook for example, why pay to promote the Petition as detailed in the above link which only has 23 signatures at the time of writing and not promote other petitions that have more chance of "succeeding the 1,000 to 5,000 signatures" or that would make more a dramatic change to island life. Detail the written process that has to be followed in gauging which to promote and if there is not such a formal process, then explain why there is no process.

Response

Neither the Government of Jersey nor the States Greffe (on behalf of the States Assembly) hold the information requested for the last five years; information is only available for the last two years.

Attached to the response is a list of the Facebook adverts sponsored by the States Greffe during the last two years.  These include adverts in respect of vote.je, for which the States Greffe is administratively responsible.  For each advert is shown the dates and title of the advert, as well as the reach (the number of unique users to have seen the post), the number of impressions and the cost per advert.  Adverts sponsoring e-petitions have been extracted into a separate list that shows (in addition to the above information) the number of signatures each e-petition received.

Below is the expenditure by the Government of Jersey during the last two years, grouped together by department.  

Total expenditure by the States Greffe during the last two years therefore amounted to £2,801.73.  Total expenditure by the Government of Jersey during the same period amounted to £384.

Expenditure on States Greffe advertising is taken from the States Assembly budget.  Expenditure on Government advertising is taken from the relevant Government department’s budget.

Information is not held about the specific roles involved in approving individual adverts.  Within the States Greffe, this role is undertaken by staff within the Digital and Public Engagement Section of the department with a ‘four eyes’ policy before publication (in that at least two people see the draft before it is published) and escalation to the Senior Leadership Team before publication as and when required.  

It is policy within the States Greffe that all e-petitions are sponsored in the same way, to ensure parity of treatment.  £10 is therefore spent on advertising for all e-petitions, with a £5 boost when an e-petition reaches 1,000 signatures and a further £5 boost when an e-petition reaches 5,000 signatures. All petitions are shared on social media in a consistent way, for instance with consistent introductory copy.  In the information provided, the cost of each e-petition on Facebook is not shown with these rounded figures as the budget is automatically split by Meta between Facebook and Instagram and so not all expenditure is incurred on Facebook.  It is acknowledged that, in two instances, expenditure on the e-petition in question was beyond these stated amounts.