The election campaign for Local Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina has cost at least 10.8 million marks according to Transparency International in BiH (TI BiH). This amount was spent on four campaign segments, including advertising on billboards, media, Meta social networks, and pre-election rally costs. The largest amounts were spent by SNSD (1.6 million BAM), followed by SDA (1.1 million BAM), SDP BiH (1 million BAM), PDP (713 thousand BAM), and HDZ (643 thousand BAM).
These amounts are not final, as they do not include advertising costs and pre-election rallies from the campaign’s final phase, nor other forms of advertising that cannot be estimated due to unavailable sources like Google ads. However, it can already be said that this is one of the most expensive election campaigns in BiH for local elections, as parties have never reported higher amounts to the CEC.
Around 6.2 million BAM spent on outdoor advertising
As in previous years, billboard advertising was by far the most expensive form of campaigning, with TI BiH observers recording about 3,800 billboard advertisements in the field, with a market value of around 6.2 million BAM.
TI BiH has published all billboard locations with party advertising on an online map, with SDA placing the highest number (520), with a market value of over 800 thousand BAM.
After SDA, SNSD, SDP, HDZ, Democratic Front, and NIP spent the most money on this form of advertising. It should be noted that outdoor advertising costs were calculated based on publicly available commercial advertising prices, although some advertisers point out that political marketing costs an additional 20%.
Media advertising
In the first three weeks of the election campaign, political parties spent around 1.6 million BAM on media advertising according to the media monitoring agency engaged by TI BiH. During the monitoring period, 2,400 advertising publications were recorded, costing (advertising and production) 1.6 million BAM. It should be emphasized that this total does not include publications that were not marked as paid advertising but had the character of paid promotion. These were mostly TV shows and interviews in print media, and the value of such publications is estimated at 1.3 million BAM.
The data was collected through media content monitoring conducted by a media monitoring agency for TI BiH and includes advertising costs on 10 leading TV stations in BiH and 28 daily and weekly newspapers.
As in previous years, parties headquartered in Republika Srpska spent more money in this part of the campaign, and according to current data, which does not include the last week of the campaign, SNSD, SDS, People’s Front, United Srpska, and PDP spent the most. It should be noted that the monitoring did not include many local and cantonal TV stations in FBiH. The amounts are estimated according to official media price lists and commercial prices, and include the costs of producing pre-election spots and materials.
Meta ads cost over 250,000 BAM
Official Meta company data shows that 6,489 political ads have been paid for in BiH so far, with a value of around 254 thousand BAM. This includes advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and costs are at last year’s level and do not include the last week of the campaign.
Naša Stranka has spent the most on this type of advertising so far, with 944 ads published on the accounts of this party and its candidates, valued at around 39 thousand BAM according to Meta’s estimate. This is followed by SDP (34,000 BAM) and SDA (26,000 BAM), followed by PDP, SPS, and SNSD.
This amount should increase further as Meta’s data is not updated in real-time and includes spending published up to Monday, and these costs also only relate to ads that this platform has marked as political in content.
It should be noted that online advertising costs are still impossible to adequately estimate as data on Google ads related to advertising on web portals and YouTube platform are not available for the BiH market. TI BiH reminds that parties should report exact amounts of costs for all forms of online advertising in the reports they were required to submit to the CEC today in the online advertising column.
Pre-election rallies
Significant election campaign costs, as in previous years, were incurred at pre-election rallies, and TI BiH observers recorded 757 pre-election rallies since the campaign began. According to TI BiH’s estimate, based on the size of rallies and accompanying content, they have cost around 2.6 million BAM so far, with costs most influenced by venue rental, food, drinks, music, equipment rental, sound systems, lighting, and other content used at rallies.
This amount is expected to increase further in the last week of the campaign when most parties organize central pre-election rallies. It should be noted that this figure is probably even higher as TI BiH did not have the capacity to cover many smaller political party gatherings in local communities.
As in previous years, SNSD spent by far the most money on this form of campaign, with the value of over 130 recorded pre-election rallies of this party amounting to about 790,000 BAM, and many of them include tent rentals, restaurants, food, drinks, and other content affecting the estimated value. After SNSD, SDA, PDP, HDZ, and SDP had the highest pre-election rally costs.
When all is added up, political parties have spent about 10.9 million BAM on three forms of paid advertising and pre-election rallies so far. Political parties have never reported more than 7 million marks in expenses for local elections before, while the highest reported campaign amount was for the past General Elections at 11.3 million BAM.
TI BiH warned then that eight parties concealed at least 1.5 million BAM as these parties’ total reported costs were far less than what TI BiH recorded on just four campaign segments.
Additionally, it should be noted that the problem of controlling political party financing has long existed in BiH and that parties do not have legal sources of funding to justify such high campaign costs. Most parties do not report donations from large companies that do business with the state and receive public money because this is prohibited by the Law on Political Party Financing.
