‘Willie Ong’ tops Facebook ad spending in W. Visayas

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

A digital advertisement featuring 2022 vice presidential hopeful Willie Ong is the top paid advertisement in Western Visayas on Facebook in the past seven days, based on the social media platform’s own metrics.

The ad features an image of Ong lecturing about the benefits of bananas, with broken Tagalog text aiming to state that the banana fruit, classified wrongly as a vegetable, could decrease blood sugar and diabetes risks.

Clicking the advertisement will lead to a link which starts with the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of “drwillie.info” which also seems to be connected to the doctor-turned-vice presidential aspirant.

But clicking on other links on the site will lead to “unansea.com”, which also features “articles” seen on online advertisements.

The ad comes from a page called “Team Banana – minions”, which was found by Daily Guardian to be an inactive Facebook page, with its last post being a cover photo change of a Vietnamese shop.

Prior to that cover photo change, its last post was in 2015 featuring a man in red clothing doing selfies with the Tagalog caption saying, “Excited na ba kayo mamaya?”

Facebook Ads Library data showed that this ad was the top spender in Western Visayas from September 30 to October 6, amounting to P13,932.

The Ads Library also showed that the page has spent up to P265,170 since August 4, with majority of its spending (P248,431) on Sept. 30.

But the ad does not contain any disclaimer, meaning that there is no indicator as to the individual or entity that paid for the ad.

The other top ad spenders in the region in the same period (Sept. 30 to Oct. 6) based on Ads Library data include Senator Win Gatchalian (P12,214), Isko 2022-Western Visayas (P7,880), Rep. Claudine Bautista (P4,328), and Kung May Alan, May Paraan (P3,786).

Unlike the Willie Ong ad, their advertisers were identified by the Ads Library to be Senator Win Gatchalian, Supporters of Isko in Visayas, Brandon Ferrer Reluao, and Francisco Payomo Gargantiel, respectively.