Facebook executive says Trump spent slightly more per ad than Hillary Clinton

A Facebook executive has revealed that US President Donald Trump spent more than his opponent Hillary Clinton to reach more people online. Spending more money potentially means reaching more voters through the social media platform.

The revelation came from an executive who ran the company's advertising business during the 2016 United States election. Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth shared a tweet showing that the POTUS spent more cash than Clinton.

In a tweet, Bosworth said they have decided to share information about campaign ads after some discussion. He was specifically referring to the CPM comparison on Trump campaign ads vs Clinton campaign ads, the cost-per-1000-impressions, a typical measure of the price of a digital ad campaign.

"This chart shows that during (the) general election period, Trump campaign paid slightly higher CPM prices on most days rather than lower as has been reported," he wrote in a tweet. Bosworth is currently in charge of consumer hardware on Facebook. He was the former vice president of advertising.

The chart covering the period from June 21 to November 8 of 2016 shows that Trump's CPM rate was higher than Clinton's. The gap grew during the final weeks of the campaign.

There are reports claiming that Trump obtained a better deal on Facebook ads than Clinton did. A report in Wired, based on a statement from Brad Parscale, director of Trump's digital operations in 2016, suggests that the social media platform’s advertising software had in effect rewarded some of the more-sensationalist and divisive Trump ads. This would have lowered the CPM for Trump's ads.

But Bosworth's tweets implied that was not the case. "Prices depend on factors like size of audience and campaign objective. These campaigns had different strategies. Given the recent discussion about pricing we're putting this out to clear up any confusion," Bosworth explained on Twitter.

Facebook said that Bosworth’s chart only counted the price of ads based on the number of people guaranteed to have been reached, ​TIME reports. There are chances that the ads could have spread further for either campaign as there are Facebook users sharing them naturally with their friends.

Campaigns do not have to pay for organic reach, which ads get by the way of Facebook users sharing them with their own networks. Organic reach can radically expand the number of people who are seeing an ad.