Is there a permanent campaign for online political advertising? Investigating partisan and non-party campaign activity in the UK between 2018–2021

Permanent campaigning has been widely examined in electoral scholarship. However, few studies have looked at paid online political advertising or compared the degree to which different types of actor engage in permanent campaigns. To fill these gaps, we present an in-depth study of online political advertising within the UK to provide new insight into the dynamics of the permanent campaign. Analyzing data from the Facebook advertising archive between 2018 and 2021, we reveal how Facebook advertising is utilized by parties, party leaders and nonparty campaign groups during electoral and non-electoral periods. We find that parties, political leaders and satellite campaign groups focus their activity primarily on general election periods and often invest little outside these periods. In contrast, nonpartizan campaign groups utilize advertising more evenly in electoral and non-electoral periods. Our findings raise questions about the extent to which online political advertising is used for permanent campaigning by different groups.