The National Party has run 92 advertisements on Facebook and Instagram this year that were seen only by men, and one that was seen only by women, according to an analysis of Meta advertising records published by RNZ on Thursday.
The 92 male-only advertisements were part of a run of more than 500 that National has placed on the two platforms since the start of the year. RNZ put the spending on them at up to $21,000, and Meta’s own estimates put the number of times they were seen at up to 3.9 million. The single advertisement that reached only women cost less than $100, ran for one day on 12 June, and was seen somewhere between 100 and 999 times by women aged 65 and over. National told RNZ it did not place it.
ACT showed a similar pattern on a smaller budget. Of the 63 advertisements it has run, 14 were seen only by men, at a cost of up to $4000 and a reach of up to 518,000 views. None were seen only by women. The Green Party ran the mirror image, with 13 of its 103 advertisements seen only by women, none seen only by men, up to $5000 spent and up to 768,000 views.
The analysis covers advertisements that started running between 1 January and 7 August this year. Advertisements paid for by Parliamentary Service, which funds MPs’ communications rather than campaigning, were left out, as were advertisements with fewer than 99 views, because Meta does not publish data on those. Labour ran no advertising funded by the party itself in that window, and NZ First ran no paid advertising on Meta at all.
Meta publishes who saw an advertisement but not the settings an advertiser chose, so the targeting is an inference rather than a disclosure. Parties can select audiences by age, gender and region, and RNZ’s position is that an advertisement reaching one gender and no members of the other is very unlikely to have happened by accident.
None of the three parties answered RNZ’s questions about why they had leaned one way. A National spokesperson said the party’s advertisements were aimed at a range of demographics and that 80 percent were seen by both men and women. On the advertisement Meta records as reaching only women, the spokesperson said, “We don’t know what the $99 spend is you are referring to, but it was not placed by the National Party campaign.”
An ACT spokesperson said the party does not discuss its digital strategy with the media, adding, “Our values and policies are for all New Zealanders – that is reflected in the range of candidates who have chosen to stand for ACT and unlock New Zealand’s potential.” A Green Party spokesperson pointed to limited money and staff, saying “it’s important we’re strategic and intentional about where we put those resources and how to best cut through to certain audiences.”
The skew is not confined to the single-gender advertisements. Across everything each party ran, about two-thirds of the people who saw ACT’s advertisements were men. National and the Opportunities Party both sat near 60 percent male. The Greens were 54 percent female, and Te Pāti Māori was close to an even split. Age patterns differed too, with Te Pāti Māori and the Greens reaching the youngest audiences and ACT reaching more people aged 65 and over.
National has spent more on Meta than anyone else this year, up to $113,904, ahead of the Greens on up to $42,883, ACT on up to $26,927, the Opportunities Party on up to $9342 and Te Pāti Māori on up to $6285. That buying power showed up in reach, with Meta estimating National’s advertisements were seen close to 19 million times.
Almost all of that money was spent before the rules that most people associate with campaign spending had even started. The regulated period for this year’s election began on Friday 7 August and runs to Friday 6 November, the day before polling day. Only spending inside that window counts towards the Electoral Commission limits of $1,503,000 for a registered party contesting the party vote, plus $36,000 for each of its electorate candidates. Seven months of advertising sat outside the cap entirely. What does apply year round is the promoter statement rule, which requires every election advertisement to carry the name and contact details of whoever is behind it, with fines of up to $40,000 for leaving it off.
Whether targeting men is good strategy for National is less obvious than it looks. The New Zealand Election Study, which surveyed almost 2000 people after the 2023 election, found 41 percent of the women surveyed had voted National, compared with 37 percent of the men. Victoria University of Wellington political science researcher Sam Crawley told RNZ that the usual generalisation is that women lean left, but 2023 ran the other way, and he wondered whether the cost of living pushed swing voters away from the incumbent. He was surprised by how many of National’s advertisements appeared to be aimed at men, saying, “Maybe they’re focusing a bit more on their base and winning votes back off ACT and New Zealand First.”
Social media and audience strategist Anna Rawhiti-Connell was puzzled by the one-day female-only advertisement, noting that advertisers usually run something for five to seven days to get through what she called the learning phase, when the platform gathers enough data to tune performance. She could not say whether it was a mistake, but called it a “funny one.”
She also suggested the era of hand-picking demographics may be ending. Meta’s artificial intelligence targeting system, Andromeda, pushes advertisers to keep audiences broad and upload several versions of the same advertisement, letting the machine work out who responds to which. Rawhiti-Connell doubted parties would use the full toolkit, given how voters might react to a party leader appearing in AI-enhanced footage.
If you want to work out where the parties actually stand before November, our voting tool compares their positions on the issues rather than their advertising budgets.
Have you noticed political advertising in your own feed this year, and does knowing how it is targeted change how you read it? Leave a comment below and tell us what you have been served.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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