$133,978 was spent on Meta last week by the top ten advertisers, reaching people across Canada. In this week’s edition of Cost Per Canadian, we puzzle over which part of Pierre Poilievre’s most recent ad was AI-generated and look at some resource extraction ads by lobbying groups and the tactics they’re deploying.

Frazer, Digital Director. Point Blank

Seven-Day Ad Spend
(25th June - 1st July)

Seven-Day Ad Spend By Federal Party
(25th June - 1st July)

Noted:

Canada’s common sense Conservative leader used digitally created or altered media in this new “Meet the family“ ad. Advertisers must disclose whenever an ad about social issues, elections, or politics contains a photorealistic image or video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered to depict any of the following:

• A real person saying or doing something they didn't say or do

• A realistic-looking person that doesn't exist

• A realistic-looking event that didn't happen

• Altered footage of a real event that happened

• A realistic event that allegedly happened, but that's not a true image, video or audio recording of the event

Advertisers don't need to disclose when media is digitally created or altered in ways that are inconsequential or immaterial to the claim, assertion or issue raised in the ad. This may include:

• Image size adjusting

• Cropping an image

• Color correction

• Image sharpening

It’s unclear which element(s) of the ad were altered to such a degree that they required disclosing, but based on the conditions above, it would have to have been something fairly significant, such as the narration or parts of the footage that have been used.

This is not the first time that the potential future Prime Minister’s team has dabbled in AI-generated content for their ads. In fact, of the nine ads most recently launched, only one contains no digitally created content. They’re not limited to ads about Poilievre either. Attack ads targeted at Leslie Church and Justin Trudeau were similarly flagged.

None of the other federal parties appear to have used AI-generated content as of this edition, but no doubt as the election draws nearer, we’ll begin seeing this flag more and more frequently.

Forestry For The Future and Voice for Energy spent a combined $30k this week promoting Forestry and Fracked Gas. Forestry For The Future has long taken a more traditional approach to greenwashing the forestry industry, leveraging claims about resiliency, logging as a method of building “climate change adapted” forests and promoting using wood as a building material.

Voice for Energy, by comparison, has been taking a different and more politically aligned approach, suggesting that “they“ (councils, provincial or federal governments, depending on the ad version) are taking consumers' choices away and risking energy disruption.

The digital advertising landscape in 2024 is so precisely targeted that for many people, it’s impossible to know which ads your neighbours, friends and family are being influenced by. We track the biggest spenders and hig-profile campaigns every week on Meta, keeping you in the loop with what the rest of Canada is seeing.

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