Elon Musk’s Pac is spending far more on ads on Facebook and YouTube than on X, Musk’s own social network.
America Pac paid $201,000 to run dozens of ads on X, formerly Twitter, during the past three months. However, it spent $3m on thousands of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram in roughly the same time period. Musk founded the pro-Donald Trump Pac in July and has funded it to the tune of $75m, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
From 8 July to 1 October, 85 days, America Pac spent more than $166,000 on 59 ads on X, according to political ad disclosures reported by Wired. After Musk requisitioned the @America handle for the Pac on 7 October, it has spent roughly $34,000 on X ads, Bloomberg reported. The ads targeted several swing states – Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin – but focus heavily on Pennsylvania. They have generated roughly 32m impressions, per Wired.
Contrast those figures with America Pac’s ad buys on Facebook. From 22 July to 19 October, a 90-day stretch, the organization spent more than $3m to run 1,910 advertisements there, duplicating some to Instagram, according to Meta’s Ad Library. America Pac paid to show ads to users in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona.
Roughly a dozen ads from America Pac received more than 1m impressions. Others garnered hundreds of thousands. The Meta Ad Library does not give an aggregate number of impressions for individual advertisers, complicating a direct comparison with ads on X.
Musk’s Pac is also spending big with Google, which owns YouTube. Since the start of July, America Pac has lavished $1.5m on 251 ads on Google and its subsidiary, 10 times what the Pac has spent on X, according to the Google Ads Transparency Center. The Pac spent 80% of that money on video ads, and the largest share of the ads were shown in Georgia, per Google’s disclosures.
Musk boasts more than 200 million followers on X. With such a massive following, he can speak to an enormous audience without needing to pay. He often retweets America Pac’s posts. Fewer than 7,000 people follow the Pac itself.
The Facebook spending speaks to Musk’s shifting geographic focus. Audience data in Meta’s Ad Library show the biggest percentage of America Pac’s ads for the past 90 days have targeted North Carolina. In the past seven days, though, the largest share of the ads – more than 25% – targeted Pennsylvania, where Musk himself has been doing most of his in-person campaigning.
Facebook allows advertisers to refine their audiences by targeting users who have engaged with similar pages. America Pac is going after users interested in Kelsey Grammer, trophy hunting, Kid Rock, the Boy Scouts of America and Joe Rogan, among other things.
Since purchasing Twitter and renaming it X in 2022, Musk has trumpeted its advertising offerings and its performance in the app store. Advertising still made up 70-75% of X’s total revenue in 2023, Bloomberg reported, despite Musk’s introduction of a subscription product, Twitter Blue. The company took in just $2.5bn in revenue in 2023, a decline of nearly half from the year prior, mostly due to a slump in advertising dollars.
Musk has thrown money at in-person events as well. Over the weekend, he pledged to give away $1m per day until the election to registered voters who sign America Pac’s petition. He’s been awarding the prizes in the form of giant novelty checks held at rallies in Pennsylvania for the past several days.
