FWIW: March 6, 2026

FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $16.5 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Unsurprisingly, Texas Democratic Senate primary opponents Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico took 2 of the top 5 spots on this list, both investing nearly $300K each on Meta platforms the week before Election Day. As we now know, Talarico would go on to ultimately secure the nomination. It’s unclear who his opponent will be in November’s general election because Republicans are in disarray and 4-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is headed to a runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 26th.

Meanwhile, California’s gubernatorial race continues to unfold in potentially alarming ways and the only candidate spending enough money on Facebook and Instagram ads to consistently make the Top 10 list is (billionaire) Tom Steyer. With Primary Day less than three months away, we’ll be watching to see if and how that changes.

Lastly, you may have clocked Facebook also invested in a six-figure ad buy. Meta advertising on Meta platforms is well… meta (we’ll see ourselves out).

Meanwhile, political advertisers spent just over $9.1 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Texas’ primary election was March 3rd and this data reflects the last full week before E-Day. Still, it’s pretty wild that half of this list is made up of Texan entities. Of the $9.1M spent on Google and YouTube last week, about 1/3 of it was on ads shown in Texas alone.

Also on this list: aforementioned California gubernatorial candidate (billionaire) Tom Steyer.

On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $1.3M on ads so far in 2026. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date:

Not a blue square in sight.

…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent just under $345,000 on ads in 2026. Here are the top spenders year to date: