Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), the organisation that executes political strategy for the YSRCP, has been spending huge money on social media platforms with elections approaching.
On Facebook platforms alone, I-PAC has spent a whopping ₹41,92,826 in March, according to Facebook’s latest ad library report.
The wide outreach achieved by the huge spending resulted in the party’s official campaign song ‘Ravali Jagan Kavali Jagan’ setting a record on YouTube by garnering 10 million views as of Saturday.
Elated by the result, I-PAC’s Prasanth Kishor, YSRCP’s election strategist, tweeted: "The first ever political campaign song to have crossed 10 million views on YouTube. Brother Y.S. Jagan, before people of A.P. bless you to become their CM, they made you the rockstar. Sirji N. Chandrababu Naidu thanks in advance for no more abuses (sic)."
Song goes viral
I-PAC’s promotions on various platforms also helped drive users to the official song on YouTube, thus making it one of the most viewed songs. The song, released on March 8, was composed by Fidaa fame Shakthikanth Karthick while award-winning writer Suddala Ashok Teja penned the lyrics and populer singer Mano rendered it, according to its credits.
Incidentally, Karthick’s song from Fidaa (2017) holds the record of the most viewed Telugu song ever on YouTube with 19.2 crore views.
Meanwhile, the TDP is also largely using YouTube where the party’s advertisements are being played for users in A.P. TDP’s multiple short duration videos have more than a million views individually.
JSP’s campaign songs also crossed one million views but are nowhere close to the YSRCP’s official song.
Among top spenders
I-PAC has become India’s sixth highest political spender on the platforms (Facebook and Instagram), next to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s top five campaigns such as ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’, ‘My First Vote For Modi’, ‘Nation with NaMo’ and others that spent between half a crore and ₹11 crore during the same period. A month ago, I-PAC had spent less than ₹1 lakh rupees on the platform.
I-PAC currently has 24 active ads running since early March which solely promote YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and songs, apps, websites and other content focused on him. The amount of money and time spent for campaign on social media indicates that YSRCP, which has lesser following compared to TDP on Facebook and other platforms, is heavily dependent on sponsored space on the platforms to reach out to users in large numbers, which explains the large expenditure. During the third week of March, I-PAC spent about ₹17.52 lakh. Like Facebook, other platforms have not revealed spending reports yet.