Who paid to reach Israeli voters before the 2026 election

Meta returned 135,577 ads delivered in Israel under its political and issue label since 1 October 2025. A classifier set aside 30,222 as commercial or unrelated and 1,728 as foreign politics. The 103,514 that remain were paid for in shekels by 1,116 declared funders on 1,575 pages.

The parties and their candidates are the largest group, but not the majority: most of the money came from campaign groups, news pages, municipalities and ministries.

The largest advertisers

All 1,575 pages, with search and filters: every advertiser (CSV). Every party and candidate also has its own page: parties and candidates.

Page types and lists come from a model reading each ad against a registry of 14 lists and their leading candidates; leaders’ own pages count for their list.

Likud came to Meta late. Benjamin Netanyahu, which carried 72% of the list’s money, ran its first ad on 24 Aug. Before that, the spending under Likud’s name was mostly its primary candidates. From the dissolution on 17 Jul the list spent ₪4.4M in 671 ads, more than any other. It bought big and few: its median ad cost ₪1.2K, the Democrats’ ₪49.5.

The Arab lists won 19 seats on the smallest budgets. Joint List spent ₪0.64 per vote and Ra'am spent ₪1.18 per vote; the median across the lists that entered the Knesset was ₪2.99. The record Arab turnout was not bought on Meta, at least not by the lists themselves.

Money did not buy a seat. Reservists-Economic (Hendel) and Amcha Yisrael (Winter) each outspent Shas over the year and missed the threshold.

On Google and YouTube the picture is different. Likud bought a single ad, for ⁦₪250 – ₪500⁩, while Together (Bennett, Lapid) spent ⁦₪1.1–1.4M⁩ there.

Spend is the midpoint of Meta’s ranges, in shekels, counted in the week each ad started. Per vote is spend from the dissolution on 17 July divided by votes in the uncertified count of 30 October. Together counts Bennett’s and Lapid’s pages, Religious Zionism-Zehut both parties, the Joint List includes Hadash. United Torah Judaism (7 seats) ran no Meta ads. The Google column is Google’s per-ad spend ranges summed for the list’s verified advertiser accounts, all of 2026.

Advertising built through September and peaked in the final fortnight. In the week of 19 October, the last full week of the campaign, advertisers launched ads worth ₪6.8M, of which the lists paid ₪4.3M.

Meta reports an ad’s spend over its whole life, so a week holds the full cost of the ads that started in it.

Google’s register of election ads holds 2,831 ads from 82 verified advertisers shown in Israel since 1 January 2026, worth ⁦₪3.5–4.9M⁩ by Google’s ranges: about 19% of what the lists spent on Meta over the same period. 78% of the ads were video, which on Google means YouTube; the rest were search text ads and display images. Together (Bennett, Lapid) and Yashar! (Eisenkot) bought the most.

31% of the year’s Google spend went out in the fortnight before the vote, the weeks of 11 Oct and 18 Oct. Before late June no week passed ₪87K.

The lists on both platforms

No list spends on Google what it spends on Meta. Together (Bennett, Lapid) comes closest, with 33% as much.

The largest Google advertisers

Every advertiser on Google is identity-verified, so a name is the buyer, not a page. Google registers 82 advertisers with ads in Israel this year; a name with no Vipima page opens the advertiser in Google’s Ads Transparency Center.

Google reports each ad’s spend and impressions as a range and publishes no ad text, so the figures are sums of range bounds and the ads are not classified by message. Advertisers are tied to lists by their verified names against the registry. Source: Google’s political advertising transparency report, updated 4 November 2026. Google has not accepted political ads in the EU since October 2025 or in Brazil since May 2024, so this section exists only for Israel and the United States.

20 pages with generic names (news, podcasts, “what’s happening?”) ran the same ad texts. Each declares itself as its own funder. What they say: street interviews with lifelong Likud or Ben-Gvir voters explaining why they are leaving. “Three times I voted Bibi, not any more.” “A Likudnik estimates 40% of Likudniks won’t vote Likud this time.” 71% of their classified ads attack someone, mostly Netanyahu, Likud or Ben-Gvir. The destination varies (Eisenkot, Bennett, Liberman, Winter), which points to an effort to peel voters away from the governing bloc rather than to win them for one list.

9 of the pages ran their first ad in October 2026. In the week of 19 October the network launched ads worth ₪682.9K; Likud and its candidates, ₪706.9K.

The texts shared most widely

• When everything’s good, Bibi is first in front of the media. When everything’s shitty, he runs away.

  כשהכל טוב ביבי ראשון בתקשורת. כשהכל חרא הוא בורח.

  204 ads on 11 pages

• Since he was a kid, only Bibi. Today?

  מאז שהוא ילד, רק ביבי. היום?

  184 ads on 11 pages

• Who votes for Bibi? What, am I crazy??

  מי מצביע לביבי? מה אני מת??

  159 ads on 10 pages

• Likud supporter estimates: 40 percent of Likud supporters won’t vote Likud this time

  ליכודניק מעריך: 40 אחוז מהליכודניקים לא ישימו הפעם ליכוד

  166 ads on 9 pages

The pages

Pages are joined when they ran identical or near-identical ad text; none of them belongs to a list in our registry. We do not know who pays: the disclaimers name only the pages. Nothing here establishes inauthentic accounts, foreign involvement or a link to any party. The same test finds 1 smaller group of 4 pages (independent media sharing a fundraising campaign), and no comparable network on the pro-Netanyahu side.

Of 91,838 ads with text to read, 36% attack a named opponent and 42% promote a list or candidate. The most frequent topics are security & rule of law, corruption & governance, and electoral process & turnout.

Tone by list

Topics and tone are classified by a model; an ad can carry several topics. Targets are as the ad names them, so “Bibi” and “Netanyahu” are counted apart.

Ads in Arabic took ₪1.4M after the dissolution, 3,798 ads. The largest payers were the Democrats’ Arabic-language page, Ra’am and the Joint List, followed by the Central Elections Committee and civil-society turnout drives.

Russian-language spend by list

Public bodies spent ₪5.3M on ads Meta filed as political. The Central Elections Committee is the largest, with turnout and voting-procedure ads. A municipality and its mayor’s page appear in the list too.