Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the (a) total and (b) disaggregated spend was on each website where army recruitment advertisements have been placed in each of the last three years.
The following table shows the total spend for web advertising and the disaggregated spend for each type of advert over the last three years.
| Recruiting Year 2015-16 | Recruiting Year 2016-17 | Recruiting Year 2017-18 (as of 30 Sep 2017) |
Job Boards | £790,000 | £650,000 | £420,000 |
Display | £970,000 | £1,360,000 | £940,000 |
Search | £470,000 | £360,000 | £200,000 |
Paid Social | £190,000 | £780,000 | £450,000 |
Total | £2,420,000 | £3,170,000 | £2,000,000 |
Definitions for each type of advert:
Job Boards - Job advertising sites, which are used to promote Army jobs.
Display – Banner adverts that appear on websites.
Search – The cost to return an advert on Google search listings, which will appear higher up search listings.
Paid Social – Content paid to be placed on Social Media sites Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Advertisements are placed through the Cabinet Office Media Buying Agency. They use algorithms to target audiences, rather than advertising on specific websites, meaning adverts may appear on a number of online platforms that carry advertising. As of 21 September 2017, there were 1,173 approved websites listed on the latest Cabinet Office Government Whitelist.
For presentational purposes, figures have been rounded to the nearest £10,000 to improve the clarity of output and convey an appropriate level of precision.