In the pre-election period, advertising prices on Facebook in Armenia grew by up to 40%. This increase is conditioned by the popularity of this social media platform in Armenia, and the effectiveness of the advertising placed there.

“Naturally, in the aftermath of the ‘Live Revolution,’ it was clear that parties and candidates would focus on social networks to find their supporters,” explains Teresa Tokmajyan, head of IP Marketing’s social media marketing department.

According to her, politics in this region are discussed by all and for that reason the political is competitive with commercial advertising.

“The CPR (efficiency cost), depending on the type of ads and format, without narrow target advertising, has grown by 20%, and the average CPR advertising in various narrow targeted groups is currently 30-40% more expensive than in the previous month,” says the specialist.  

The price of advertising is generated by the extent to which the advertisement is visually and contextually suitable for the campaign target group. This increases the likelihood hat in the event of advertising, the user will in some way interact with the material (click, like, comment, etc.), as Teresa points out.

Digital Marketing and Digital Communications Expert, Artak Harutyunyan, says that digital technologies, especially social networks, have become one of the most optimal and effective channels to reach voters.

“The revolution that Nikol Pashinyan managed to organize using Facebook, forced even “dinosaurs” to value the effectiveness of this communication platform,” said the expert.   

According to him, now it is much more important that the messages are conveyed to their target audiences in all this information noise. Artak noticed that in the pre-election period, many non-professional and non-targeted advertising placements are not only useless but also hurt the causes of some candidates.

Samvel Sahakyan, head of “Prime Commercial” online advertising agency, is convinced that Facebook advertising prices will stabilize in January. We shouldn’t expect it to happen sooner, because pre-holiday activities will begin after the elections.

The specialist explains that advertising on Facebook is auctioned, with the most traffic falling to the person who pays the most.

“Everyone started to advertise, especially the rating candidates. Many people are illiterately injecting their money without targeting their ads. There is no point in hoping for results this way,” explains Samvel.

Unpublished Facebook Ads

Artak Harutyunyan says that attracting relevant professionals is more important than the amount of budget spent on successful Facebook campaigns.

Not only do professionals talk about unsuccessful political ads on Facebook. Users are often surprised to see why they are seeing ads of this or that, especially ranking candidates, on their Facebook wall.

“Advertising on social network should be entrusted to professionals, not administrators,” said Teresa.

You can come across political ads on Facebook, where the face of the candidate doesn’t appear on the banner, or the photo is without a text and it’s not clear as to what the advertiser is trying to say.

 

During the pre-election period, many brands who could not compete with political advertising began to find creative solutions and succeeded.

“In the current situation, some brands decided to go with the integration of political memes, which is very risky and in some cases can be unsuccessful and create negativity. But since Armenians love to create memes, all the political memes were organic and very successful,” explains Teresa Tokmajyan.  

The dynamics of an increase of followers for parties

According to Socialbakers data, a social media marketing website, the Facebook pages of political forces participating in the elections were very active between November 26 – December 6. The chart features fie active Facebook forces, with the number and peculiarities of their followers.

“According to the number of publications, Bright Armenia is in the first place and the Orinats Yerkir party is comparatively passive in that respect. However, experience shows that the Orinats Yerkir party has created more of a boom with its policy and sharp videos,” said Tokmajyan.

According to statistical data, the Facebook page “If You Are Concerned” does not behind Orinats Yerkir’s page in terms of high results, moreover its posts have the highest number of likes, comments and shares.

 

The political forces participating in the 2018 snap parliamentary elections have invested a lot of money in Facebook for their campaigns. The efficiency of the spent resources will show after the December 9 elections.

Gayane Asryan