Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps in the world. It is no surprise, then, that many political ads are run on the service each year. Snap Inc.'s political ads library is part of an effort by the company to increase transparency in their advertising practices. The data analyzed in this project spans 2019-2020, and consists of information on every political ad that was run on the service in that timeframe, including who the ad buyer was, how much the ad cost, what areas it targeted, etc. Geographic and monetary distribution of ads is analyzed and possible explanations given for anomalies. Missingness of the data was evaluated and Vermont was identified as an area with unusual spending. With α = 0.05 the null hypothesis was rejected (p = 0.02); the distribution of ad dollars to Vermont is not wholly random.