Ten political parties spent more than BAM 790.000 on media advertising in just ten days

Monitoring of the election campaign in the past two weeks showed that political parties SNSD and SDS spent the most funds on advertising, which primarily includes TV and print media advertising.

Banja Luka, 24th September 2018 – In the first 15 days of the campaign political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina spent more than BAM 790.000 on advertising in digital and print media, showed the monitoring performed by Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH). The analysis included ten political parties and eight candidates for individual functions, who all together have published 1.428 paid ads on TV stations and in print media since the beginning of the campaign.

The results show that Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata (SNSD), as a political party, has occupied the most media space in the first several days of the campaign and has spent more than BAM 182.000 for it so far. They are followed by Srpska demokratska stranka (SDS) which has spent more than BAM 155.000, while Partija demokratskog progresa (PDP) is placed after them with a media advertising cost of about BAM 100.000. The fourth place on this list is taken by relatively small political party Ujedinjena Srpska which has spent more than BAM 82.000 on advertising in the first part of the campaign, of which almost BAM 60.000 has been paid to TV station ATV. Demokratski narodni savez (DNS) has spent about BAM 78.000 so far, while Stranka demokratske akcije (SDA) has spent around BAM 65.000 for its promotional advertising.

Individually, Mladen Ivanic has spent the most for the campaign – more than BAM 87.000, while Vukota Govedarica has spent around 60.000 so far. It is interesting that their rivals Milorad Dodik and Zeljka Cvijanovic have spent almost half of that amount on personal promotion, but they are intensively using their functions for the campaign and have arranged to be significantly more present in the public and more viewed in news programs which are much better rated than the specialized election advertising blocks. The same applies in case of Dragan Covic who has almost had no media advertising so far, but has been daily present in public as a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When it comes to the media which is usually chosen for advertising, SDA has paid the most for advertising on TV station Hayat, although they have occupied a part of media space on TV station RTV Federacije BiH. On the other side, Savez za bolju buducnost (SBB) has spent the most for advertising in daily newspaper Avaz and on TV station Alfa TV. SNSD prefers advertising on TV stations ATV and RTRS, which have been entrusted with three-quarters of media advertising for this political party. SDS and PDP have mostly been advertised on TV stations BN TV and N1, but they have been partially advertised on RTRS as well. DNS has paid the most for advertising on TV station BN TV, followed by TV stations ATV and K3.

The overall amount of more than BAM 790.000 is nearly the same as the advertising costs for the first two weeks of the campaign for the General Elections in 2014, when TI BiH performed monitoring as well, and when the total advertising costs for the entire campaign conducted by ten political parties were more than BAM 4,5 million. Having in mind the previous practice of the parties to intensify their advertising in the last two weeks of the campaign, it is expected that the costs will be several times higher by the end of the campaign.

TI BiH notes that the monitoring covers only occupation of space in digital and print media, and the costs of preparing video materials and advertisements. Due to the unavailability of the data, web sites and social networks have not been included, and they have become an extremely popular form of advertising political parties. External advertising has not been covered either, so these data are only small part of the total money spent on the campaign.

In addition to monitoring advertising, Ti BiH is also performing monitoring of using public funds for the purpose of election campaign, and the analysis of everything that has happened so far showed numerous example of misusing public institutions, functions and taxpayers money for the promotion of political parties. The analysis of using public funds is available at: http://transparentno.ba/javnenabavke/2018/09/24/od-otvaranja-radova-objekata-dodjele-pomoci-do-direktne-zloupotrebe-javnih-sredstava-za-stranacku-kampanju/.

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