Hungarian pro-goverment movement conducting Europe's most expensive political ad campaign on YouTube

Over the past few weeks, Hungarian streets and the internet have become flooded with billboards and ads attacking Péter Magyar. Last weekend Magyar wrote that pro-government circles spent 100 million forints (nearly 250 thousand euros) on the smear campaign against him in a single day. Since the amount paid for the billboards is not public, we cannot verify this, but the cost of the Facebook and YouTube campaign can be easily verified based on the advertising data of Google and Meta.

These show that in recent weeks, Ellenállás Mozgalom Non-Profit Kft. spent a good 40 million forints on these ads on each of these platforms.

Nemzeti Ellenállás Mozgalom (eng: The Movement of National Resistance) was founded in December 2024, by governing-party politicians and well-known as well as some lesser-known figures from pro-government media outlets and some pro-government influencers. According to the organization’s website: "...the leaders in Brussels, backed by globalist forces, have made it clear that they want to interfere in our country's internal affairs. Manfred Weber and his allies have also made known the identities of the foreign-paid political adventurers who want to set up a puppet government in Hungary. We must say no to this!"

The amount they spent (40 million HUF on Facebook and the same on YouTube) especially stands out on YouTube in the category of political and public affairs ads: according to the data of the Google Ad Transparency Center, this Hungarian organization has spent the most on political ads in the past thirty days in all of the EU. Additionally, half of the top 10 advertisers in this category in Europe are Hungarian players, with the biggest advertisers being names such as Fidesz, Mediaworks, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Sovereignty Protection Office.

In view of this, it is perhaps not surprising that Hungary has been the EU country that has spent by far the most on political advertising on YouTube over the past 30 days. The total bill of €203,000 roughly equals the combined spending of the second-placed (Germany, €106,000), third (Romania, €39,500) fourth (Italy, €34,500) and fifth (Belgium, €22,600) placed countries.

We contacted Nemzeti Ellenállás Mozgalom to ask how they are funding their advertising campaigns, but have not yet received a response.