The State, Digital Platforms, and the Production of Payment-Induced Visibility

This chapter discusses advertising on digital platforms as an electoral campaign strategy. The problem is analyzed as part of a broader process of change on the Internet that, since the mid-1990s, has become a space for the expansion of commodification through advertising. Guided by the pursuit of profit, new digital corporations have developed forms of promotion that condition the visibility of content to financial investment. Through changes in electoral regulations and laws, state authorities have progressively enabled the insertion of this kind of logic into electoral dynamics. The empirical analysis carried out by the authors demonstrated the increased relevance of Internet ads to Brazilian electoral campaigns. It focuses particularly on the 50 candidates who invested the most resources to boost digital ads during the 2022 electoral cycle. Findings show that the funds spent on promoting mechanisms increased fivefold between 2018 and 2022, going from R$70 million to almost R$355 million (gross values, excluding inflationary changes). These resources are concentrated in two companies, Facebook and Google, which have become the largest suppliers of digital ads for electoral campaigns. Furthermore, despite the exponential increase in digital advertising, great asymmetry between candidacies nonetheless remains, with reach depending not only on the coveted/elected position, but also on the candidates’ party and region of origin.