Is Google rewriting history?

Have the dates on Google's Fidesz ads changed in its ad archive?

Last week I broke the news that Google had erased 7 years of Europe's political ad history when it removed public access to its political ad archive.

A few days later, Hungarian outlet Telex discovered that Victor Orban's Fidesz Party was still being allowed to run ads (we predicted this).

How did the ruling party of a European nation evade three-trillion-dollar-Google's sophisticated ad filtering?

By saying that the ads' topic was "Internet and Telecom" not "Political".

How crafty.

Screenshot taken by Telex for their Oct 1st article on Google running Fidesz ads. Source

I was looking at this story for a column I have coming out later in the week and I spotted something strange; search the Google archive now and these ads are in there, but mysteriously the "Last shown" date now seems to read as the 22nd of September, the day the ban came in, and not Sept 28th, as Telex's screenshot above showed.

I checked all of the ads in the (commercial, non-political) archive for this account with this copy and they all say the 22nd (you can find them all yourself here - if I have missed something do let me know).

Can you spot the difference?

Screenshot from the Google ad library taken today, Oct 5th Source

Cheeky, cheeky Google.

📻 Listen: Aras25 ad spend

I was on the RTE's This Week show last weekend to talk political ad spend with Justin McCarthy - you can listen back here (from 10 mins in).

📻 Listen: RTE This Week (from 10 mins)

I talked about how at that point Catherine Connolly was still running a message testing campaign, Heather Humphreys was spending the biggest, and Jim Gavin was giving Simon Harris in the GE high energy vibes.

I also get into TikTok, where Catherine Connolly dominates in follows (13k, versus 3k for Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys's 1k).

I also noticed this week that in an account I set up just to follow this campaign, that just follow the 3 candidates, Connolly seems to be the only one getting organic buzz from users endorsing her - mostly for her views on Gaza.

A dramatic reversal on Meta ad spending

This week has seen a dramatic reversal of the Meta spending trends to date.

Humphreys has been outspending the other two candidates for weeks (see the middle numerical column below - she was outspending Catherine Connolly 10:1 and Jim Gavin 6:1 up until about 10 days ago).

But if we look at just the last week we see that Connolly and Gavin have dramatically overtaken her, and are now spending about double (note this is in the week to Oct 2nd, the most recent data available).

Humphreys may just be ahead of the curve and anticipating the cliff edge that looms when Meta are due to cut off digital ads in the EU on Friday; there are a lot of her bus shelter ads in my neck of the woods at the moment.

Which reminds me...

📻 Listen: The Economics of the Presidency

I was on Newstalk's Taking Stock show that aired this morning talking about the costs of both the campaign and the presidency itself - listen back here (from 31:30mins).

📻 Listen: Newstalk (from 31mins)

I run through some of my favourite stats on Presidency campaign finance; if you'd like a post on that, hit reply and let me know.