Other entrants also advertised

There were also ad campaigns for other entries this year. Social media users in parts of Europe reported seeing sponsored posts for Malta, Greece, Albania, Poland, Armenia and France, although some of these were run by the artists themselves via their own social platforms, and some were promoted via the competing broadcaster in the territory. In some cases, ads were run weeks ahead of the contest, without a prompt to vote.

Maltese singer Miriana Conte ran a series of ads through her own Meta platforms, as can be seen in the Meta Ad Library. An ad campaign for the Greek entry, Klavdia, was run on Meta platforms by Greek broadcaster ERT, via an official Facebook page the broadcaster has for the song contest. Physical poster advertisements were seen in Italy for Tommy Cash, the Estonian entry, whose song makes multiple references to Italian culture. The poster showed the ads appeared to have been run by Epic Records Italy, a division of Sony Music. The Spotify listing for the song, ‘Espresso Macchiato’, shows it is under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment Italy S.p.A.

Interesting context! Maybe broadcasters and artists should be required to disclose ad spend?