Who paid Facebook the most for election advertising in Tasmania?

Despite the Liberal Party's roadside election material appearing to vastly outnumber that of any other party, it seems Labor chose to put a greater emphasis on its online advertising, spending a total of $72,533 on ads for the Tasmanian Labor Facebook page and party leader Rebecca White's page between March 30 and April 28 (the election was called on March 26).

Ms White also spent $2247 of her own money on ads for her page within the same date range.

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The party's most recent ads largely focused on the problems plaguing Tasmania's health system, and included links to newspaper articles about policy announcements, as well as links to donate to Labor.

None of this was enough to propel the party to election glory, however, with Labor instead suffering a 4 per cent blow to its primary vote.

Bass Labor candidate Janie Finlay, who is set to be elected to the parliament, spent the second most of any candidate on Facebook advertising, with $5625.

The Tasmanian Liberals splurged $53,896 on ads for both the party and Premier Peter Gutwein's pages. Many of these were framed as warnings to Tasmanians about the prospect of a Labor-Green minority government, while others highlighted internal disunity within Labor using clippings of newspaper headlines.

Braddon Liberal candidate Felix Ellis, an incumbent who shocked pundits with a strong performance on election night, spent $7984 on his own Facebook ads - the most of any candidate.

Meanwhile, the Greens spent $10,435 all up on ads for the Tasmanian Greens page, as well as the Jack Davenport for Bass and Greens MPs pages.

Franklin Greens candidate and one of the Greens' two incumbents, Rosalie Woodruff, used $6167 of her own money on Facebook ads.

Then there was the Bob Brown Foundation, which spent $16,432 on ads for its page, which has more than 113,000 'likes'.

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