Online political advertising is now central to how campaigns communicate with voters, making it a crucial component of modern election coverage. Who Targets Me’s Trends platform makes the data behind these ads accessible and interpretable, giving journalists evidence to on who’s spending, who’s being targeted, and what messages are being circulated to voters.
1. What Trends Shows
Trends aggregates political digital advertising data from Facebook and Instagram’s Meta Ad Library and, in some countries, Google’s ad transparency sources. It covers spending, targeting and messaging for more than 120,000 advertisers in over 60 countries.
Key types of information available in Trends:
- Advertiser identity and political affiliation — who is running the ads and which parties or campaigns they’re linked to.
- Spending figures — how much campaigns are investing in digital ads
- Targeting breakdowns — demographic (age, gender) and geographic patterns where available.
- Dates active — when ads run during an election cycle.
- Automated content summaries — themes, tone and topics derived from ad text.
This data helps you spot changes over time, for instance, surges in ad activity or new messaging as an election nears.
2. How to use Trends
For data-driven campaign coverage, Trends is useful in multiple ways:
- Track ad spending over time: Compare which parties or candidates are investing most, and how their strategies evolve.
- Understand messaging trends: Identify recurring themes or attack lines across digital ads.
- Profile targeted audiences: See which demographic groups or regions are being focused on in digital campaigns.
- Contextualise digital strategies: Place ad activity in the wider campaign narrative and assess its significance.
- Detect rapid changes: Find unexpected spikes or shifts in activity that could signal campaign pivots.
For example, you might report on which campaign is overspending relative to peers, how messaging differs between digital and traditional channels, or which demographic groups receive the most tailored messaging. These insights can enrich stories on campaign tactics and voter outreach.
3. Global coverage
Trends includes data from major democracies with diverse electoral systems. Countries currently tracked include the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Brazil, India and many more, with tracked advertiser counts ranging from nearly 50,000 in the U.S. to hundreds in other nations.
This breadth of coverage means you can compare digital campaign tactics across contexts in your reporting or focus on the specific races you cover.
4. Support with your stories
Beyond the dashboards themselves, Who Targets Me offers:
• Custom research and API access for in‑depth analysis.
• Automated content summaries useful for identifying narrative patterns.
• Training and briefings to help you interpret and tell stories with the data.
There’s also the option to discuss story ideas or data needs directly with the team, which can help translate Trends’ raw data into journalistic insight.
5. Accessing the data
A free account will give you basic access to Trends dashboards, while specialised journalist access (including expanded coverage and analysis support) is also available.
If you’re covering the next election, whether national, regional or local, Trends can help you answer questions like:
- Who is spending on digital ads and where?
- Which demographics are being targeted the most?
- How are campaign messages evolving over time?
Using this data can add factual depth and nuance to your election reporting, moving beyond anecdotes to show how digital campaign strategies are playing out in real time.