HYDERABAD: One would think that highest amount paid for advertising on social media, especially in Facebook, in the Telangana region would be from the local politicial arena. That has generally been the case, be it in Maharashtra, Haryana or West Bengal, where Shiv Sena, BJP and the Trinamool Congress respectively have been spending the most for advertising their parties. However suprisingly, in Telangana, the highest paid advertisements for the last 90 days came from United States of America-based Bloomberg Philanthropies — the organisation that handles the page of Mike Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Philanthropies spent Rs 3.96 lakh between Sep 27-Dec 25, which is more than four times higher than what Telangana Rashtra Samithi has spent in that time frame. It is important to note that Mike Bloomberg has announced that he would enter the Democractic Presidential Primary for the upcoming US Presidential elections. Since then he has spent $100 million on advertising since then, all over. The State government, for the promotion of the page ‘Telangana CMO’ on Facebook, which posts updates on government initiatives and so on, spent around Rs 90,000 in that time.
But what exactly have Bloomberg Philanthropies been advertising that needed such a huge amount of capital influx? It is the discussion that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had with Mike Bloomberg back in September at the third Bloomberg Global Business Forum. Caption of the ads on Facebook read, “PM Narendra Modi has charted an ambitious agenda to unlock India’s growth potential”.
A look into the advertisement analytics available on Facebook show that these ads were also shown in Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. One can deduce from that they ads were mainly targeted towards those who residing in metropolitan cities. Apart from, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Telangana CMO the other top spenders in the Telangana region were AP MLA Rajini Vidadala, TRS Huzurnagar MLA Sanampudi Saidi Reddy and so on.