Why is the government spending $21-million advertising on social media such as TikTok?
, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the executive director of McMaster University’s master of public policy in digital society program.
As we scroll these days, we may notice a government-promoted post, which means that we as taxpayers have paid to post information on a platform and push it into people’s feeds. The $21-million spent last year is at the crest of a steady increase over the years, up from $7.8-million in 2017. On TikTok specifically, the Government of Canada spent $1.7-million on ads last year, up 128 per cent from the previous year.
Last year, in addition to TikTok, the government’s $21-million in ad spending also spanned platforms such as Facebook/Instagram,That represents just a modest increase from the almost $20-million it spent in the 2020-21 fiscal year. But in the year prior to that, fiscal 2019-20, that figure was only $8.6-million. In a year, the government’s spending on social media more than doubled.
For that explanation, consider that some of this spending allocation may have been influenced by the Directive on the Management of Communications, which mandates that advertising expenditure must be “cost-effective,” naturally privileging social-media platforms. This directive may be an impediment to the government reallocating advertising dollars to more responsible actors.
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