According to information supplied by ministers, government departments spent almost €1.3 million on social media and virtual advertising last year.
Eleven of the 15 Government departments have disclosed what they have spent on structures, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Instagram, and for pop-up ads and sidebars.
The total spend for 2018 changed to €1,287,111. Only the Departments of Defence and Rural Affairs had zero returns. The information is contained in replies to parliamentary questions submitted by SociDemocratats co-leader Catherine Murphy.
With 3 of the most crucial spending departments not filing any statistics, the overall discernment should, without difficulty, exceed €1. Five million, displaying a clean approach inside the Government of migrating to social media platforms for advertising and data campaigns.
The largest spender using far changed into the Department of An Taoiseach, which spent more than €437,000 in the remaining 12 months on 18 one-of-a-kind campaigns.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the cause of its high spending was that it became a selection in 2017 to run pass-government facts campaigns centrally. His branch took duty.
He disclosed that the purchase of digital and online space was managed via media shopping for the agency Ph.D. Media. Purchasing digital and online space includes advertising and marketing on search engines like Google (to ensure the public is directed to the sites that deliver the services they’re seeking out) and social media. Social media relates to subsidized posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
Global Ireland
The most significant single expenditure in the Department of An Taoiseach was for Global Ireland, which was valued at €283,000. The second-biggest marketing campaign on social media and virtual structures was for Project Ireland 2040, which cost €95,000.
Almost €10,000 was spent on the unsuccessful effort to carry the Rugby World Cup to Ireland 2017. Healthy Ireland concerning the spending of approximately €eight 000, at the same time as Bliain na Gaeilge fee of € 4,632.
The Department of Arts and Culture spent more than € 100,000 in 2018, nearly half of which became the Culture Ireland program.
The Department of Foreign Affairs spent just about € forty-one 000. Its biggest spend was on a virtual and social media campaign for online passport renewals, which cost €38,000.
The most massive unmarried marketing campaign changed into an extensive campaign commissioned via the Department of Finance, which encouraged financial institution customers to exchange the money owed from one bank for another. It cost more than €four hundred,000, but Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said in their reply that every one of the charges had been recouped from the two banks with huge State stakes in their ownership: AIB and Permanent TSB.
Domestic violence
The Department of Justice was also a massive spender, its number one campaign being What Would You Do? Which became designed to raise attention to home violence.
That campaign fee is almost € hundred and forty 000, broken down as follows: social media (€17,470), Google Adwords (€20,336), Video on Demand (€28,449), online content partnerships (€ forty-eight 713), and digital display commercials (€24,298).
The Department of Employment and Social Protection spent more than € 57,000 on social media and digital advertising, including selling My Welfare on its website.
Four departments—Education, Transport, Children and Youth Affairs, and Housing—were now not in a role to offer the facts because they had not been collated.
