Paid attention: Mapping political and news advertising strategies on social media across Europe

We investigate the structure and dynamics of paid visibility on social media platforms by analyzing the advertising behavior of political parties and news outlets across six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom) from 2019 to 2024. Drawing on ∼291𝑘 advertising campaigns and ∼7M organic posts from Meta’s Ad and Content Libraries, we employ descriptive analytics, linear and nonlinear modeling, and panel regression techniques to investigate advertising activity and quantify the relationship between spending patterns and exposure metrics. Beyond enhancing the transparency of the advertising process, our analysis reveals three key findings: (1) In four out of six countries, political parties are the primary users of social media advertising, with a small number of pages accounting for the majority of spending and exposure. (2) Posts exposure grows rapidly with low levels of advertising expenditure but saturates beyond moderate thresholds, suggesting the presence of bounded attention markets. (3) Advertising spending is positively associated with overall page performance. Furthermore, when addressing the challenging task of comparing paid and organic visibility, we observe a positive increase in the spending coefficient, particularly for political parties, which consistently generate more impressions than news pages. These results offer empirical evidence that visibility operates as a platform-mediated market, shaped by algorithmic constraints, economic incentives, and strategic competition. By empirically mapping the structure and distribution of paid attention, this study offers a data-driven contribution to enhance platform transparency and accountability.