Trump campaign ad targeting voters in state of Georgia used photo from country of same name
The ad targeting voters in the U.S. state of Georgia featured a stock image of the landscape in Georgia, the country in eastern Europe.
CLAIM
A campaign advertisement for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid urged eligible voters to check their voter registration status. The social media ad included a photo depicting scenery in Georgia, and calling on voters in the U.S. state to register for the election.
BACKGROUND
The candidates in the U.S. Presidential Election are advertising across social media as well as via traditional outlets ahead of the upcoming vote in early November.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has been running state-specific ads on Facebook, urging voters in the states to check their voter registration status and urging them to ‘Register to vote for Trump’.
One ad, which had been repeatedly scheduled to run from August into late September in Georgia, included a call to residents there to check on their registration.
Across eight versions of the same ad, it received 45,000-50,000 impressions, according to the Meta Ad Library, and between $1,000 and $1,500 were spent on the ads.
The ad included a scenic image showing a mountainous landscape, apparently in Georgia. Similar ads targeting other states featured some landmark from that state. Here is an example of ads that targeted voters in Pennsylvania.
News reports tracking the ad spend on this year’s vote have outlined the hundreds of millions of dollars each candidate and their allies are spending on ads for the election. Most of the money is being spent on traditional advertising on television and radio.
METHOD
After users on social media reported that they noticed something wrong with the image, we ran a reverse image search on a portion of the picture — a crop without text — that was used in the ad.
It pulled up dozens of exact matches and similar images, mostly for websites and blogs promoting the country Georgia, in Europe, as a tourism destination, as well as from stock photo websites.
From there, we were able to see that it appeared in this article on Culture Trip, a travel guide and tour booking website that listed destinations that are friendly for American visitors.
The attribution of it in that article led us to Shutterstock, the source of the image.
On Shutterstock, the photo is described as follows: “Blooming white rhododendron flowers in the Caucasus mountains in June. Cloudy morning view of the mountain hill in Upper Svanetia, Georgia, Europe. Beauty of nature concept background.”
It was taken by photographer Andrew Mayovskyy and added to the platform in February 2017.
From this analysis, we deducted that the image does not show a scene in the U.S. state of Georgia, and instead depicts the Caucasus mountains in Georgia, the country in eastern Europe.
RATING
The ad targeting voters in the U.S. state of Georgia featured a stock image of the landscape in Georgia, the country in eastern Europe.
SOURCES
Facebook.com. (2024). Ad Library. [online] Available here [Accessed 24 Sep. 2024].
Financial Times. (2024). Financial Times. [online] Available at: Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump: tracking the 2024 US presidential advertising battle [Accessed 24 Sep. 2024].
Schleifer, T. (2024). Presidential Campaigns and Allies Plan $500 Million in TV and Radio Ads. [online] Nytimes.com. [Accessed 24 Sep. 2024].
Reuters (2024) US political ad spending to soar in 2024 with TV media the biggest winner – report, 11 January. (Accessed 24 September 2024).
Abrahams, L. (2017). 11 Destinations That Absolutely Love Americans. [online] Culture Trip. [Accessed 24 Sep. 2024].
Shutterstock. (2017). Blooming White Rhododendron Flowers Caucasus Mountains Stock Photo 581596678 | Shutterstock. [Accessed 24 Sep. 2024].