The campaign has been officially launched. And unofficially, it has started long ago. There will be no big difference: Everyone has already been employed. Facebook advertising prices have already gone up.

And I want to say a few useful things:

a. If you are representing a small or medium-sized business, it’s better not to post ads on Facebook these few days until election day. Of course if it’s not urgent. Because here, the pricing of ads are auctioned, and the political forces are investing money on advertising and the prices are constantly rising.

b. If you are  journalist or a concerned citizen, you can explore the political powers advertising on Facebook. Recently such an opportunity has been opened.

Up till now, it was not so easy to know what advertisements are on Facebook, if you didn’t find a specific target, you wouldn’t even see it. Now, you can see the active and current ads easily on every page.

Just go to the page and find the Info and Ads section on the right, and you will see all the active promotional items in one place at one time. Of course, this page does not allow you to know the exact targeting and advertising budgets, but it is possible to make approximate estimates.

It should be taken into consideration that advertising budgets are spent not only on the official pages of parties and alliances, but also on candidate pages. This is why most of the candidates have hastily opened pages during recent days.

As, only pages have the ability to place ads on Facebook.

c. If you already see ads on your wall, you can click on the Why am I seeing this section in the top right corner, where you will be able to find out why you see the advertisement and what target group you’ve been placed in by this or that political forces.

d. The hottest advertisements are now being placed in groups. If an ad is placed in a page dedicated to veterinarianism about the rating candidates humanism and ability to play backgammon, know that the admin of the group has just been employed.

Usually, staying in such groups is futile: professional news will only be available there on Saturdays and Sundays and when there is nothing else to post.

e. And finally, dear adult reader, you can be like many tens of thousands of compatriots who are leaving Facebook and moving on to something else, like Instagram for example, where politics are much less.

And the important thing is that there are virtually no unparalleled, identical, exact, widespread candidates, who will not be able to understand that it’s possible to follow after you.

Until they manage to, the elections will end.

Samvel Martirosyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.