Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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128. To ask the Taoiseach the amount spent by his Department on both traditional and online advertising in each of the past five years and to date in 2021; the breakdown of funding; and the details of the media outlets, online platforms and social media companies with which his Department advertised. [21764/21]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The figures requested by the Deputy are in the table below.

The bulk of the spendin 2021, and last year, relates to the COVID-19 emergency. Public information campaigns played a vital role in communicating the various strands of the pandemic. The campaigns informed citizens of all stages of restrictions as they were introduced and subsequently lifted. Public information campaigns were also used to communicate with citizens on the supports being made available by Government to get through the pandemic. Campaigns included information on business and wellbeing supports, postponement of Leaving Cert 2020, School Reopening and the Jobs Stimulus Plan. Campaigns also encouraged the key behaviours necessary to control the virus. Campaigns communicated the Reopening plan in the Summer of 2020 and the National Framework for Living with Covid-19.

The scale of the communications challenge faced by Government was unprecedented, requiring public information campaigns across every sector of the economy and society.

The communications strategy for Covid-19 required national and international coordination. A series of coordinated campaigns were developed to ensure maximum clarity for citizens, businesses and our wider community.The strategy aligned with both World Health Organisation (WHO) and European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) advice, both of which emphasised the importance of ensuring the general public is aware of the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak and further that a high degree of population understanding, community engagement and acceptance of the measures put in place are key in preventing further spread.

It is also recommended that communication strategies should target different audiences and provide the rationale behind the measures, also outlining the necessity to put a support system in place to provide essential services and supplies (e.g. food and medication), and to monitor vulnerable individuals.This necessitated expenditure on a broad range of targeted public messaging across a range of different information campaigns using national and local radio, national and regional newspapers, and social media platforms. The centralised approach adopted is helping to ensure effectiveness of advertising spend and consistency and amplification of the public health messaging across the various public awareness campaigns and to those hard to reach audiences.

The communications programme recognises the importance of ensuring as many people as possible receive the information they need in the format that suits them, using the appropriate channels and delivered in the appropriate way. They also understand that, for example, when trying to encourage particular behaviours that will protect communities and the health service, certain groups receive communications in different ways. The campaigns utilise platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

The AntiViral campaign has been particularly effective. Following a significant increase in case numbers among 18-24 year olds in the autumn of 2020, GIS, the Department of Health and the HSE engaged with representative groups to understand the needs of this demographic. Insight generated from the research these groups had conducted confirmed that young people had been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, were concerned about it and its impact upon them and their loved ones.

It also revealed that they wanted this to be recognised and that they wanted information to be given to them in the appropriate way, by their peers. Taking this insight, we worked with an agency with a track record of communicating with this demographic and developed Antiviral – a campaign that encouraged this group to assume a leadership role in dealing with the pandemic, generating a movement they could relate to and that was delivered by their peers. The campaign continues to be very successful, utilising platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. The campaign has evolved based on feedback from young people and the current strand of the campaign features the stories of young people who have been directly affected by the virus.

This campaign achieved overall impressions and reach of 18.8m and 1.48 million respectively. Engagement (a key metric as it indicates content that has resonated with an audience, causing them to actively interact with the content) has been striking, with an overall engagement of 288,787. On TikTok the level of engagement was 21%, far in excess of the industry standard of 6%. On Instagram, engagement was 36% again a notable achievement given the standard of between 3-5%.

In 2020there was an expenditure of €16.9 million on providing information to the public, across a range of platforms, on the various Covid-19 restrictions as they were implemented, the wide range of business supports, social welfare supports and community supports available and targeted measures.

In 2019,the spend included €12,000 on online advertising, and €17,000 on video and radio ad production. My Department paid for public information campaigns relating to Budgets 2019 and 2020, for public consultation notices for draft language schemes, and for the ‘Votail100’ commemorations. There was also expenditure for advertisements relating to the recruitment of Judges.

In 2018, the €1.6m spend was across online, print, broadcast advertising, and production costs. The spend related to major cross-Government public information campaigns that the Department funded centrally. These campaigns included Healthy Ireland, Global Ireland, Project Ireland 2040 and the Self Employed Benefits campaign, aimed at ensuring self-employed people are aware of the new and existing benefits available to them.

In 2017, the €40,000 spend related to cross-Government public information campaigns on Healthy Ireland and Self-Employed benefits.

In, 2016,the €10,000 spend related to the Home to Work information campaign.

There have been 48 Covid-19 campaigns undertaken to date. Each campaign was advertised using a combination of National Press, Regional Press, Radio, Digital Display, Social Media, TV and Online Video. Not all platforms were used in every campaign.

Press

30 of the 36 campaigns run to date were advertised in National press and had an average reach of 49%, with 20 of these reaching over 50%. The average readership for the 30 campaigns was 1,914,842 (with 19 of the 30 campaigns having a readership of over 2million). This figure does not include the Regional press, for which exact figures are not known, but combined readership for regional press is over 1,500,000 for each campaign.

Radio

Radio advertising had an average reach of 79%, with 23 of the 31 campaigns advertised on radio reaching over 80%. This translates to approximately 99,190,000 times that the radio ads were heard.

Online

Digital display advertising was used in 19 campaigns, with a combined reach of 44,875,871. This was an average of 2,361,888 impressions, with six of the campaigns reaching over 3,000,000 citizens. In the 26 campaigns which used Social media advertising, the total number of impressions across all campaigns was 115,520,006. This translates to an average of 4,443,077, with a high of 16,119,670 impressions for the Publication of the Roadmap campaign.

TV and online video

To date, we have metrics for two TV advertisements. These have had a combined reach of 4,878,750. Online video ran for the same two campaigns, with an additional reach of 1,236,415.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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129. To ask the Taoiseach if it is still the case that all Government spending on advertising is managed by his Department; and if not, if it is the case that each Department manages their own spending on advertisements. [21765/21]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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My Department does not manage the spending on advertising for all Government Departments. Each Department has responsibility for their spend on advertising.