According to a report by the General Auditor's Office (AGN) during 2009, $826 million pesos were distributed in advertising almost without any planning or criteria.

This occurred despite the existence of regulations just enacted in 2009, an administrative decision that established the obligation to draw up annual strategic planning for advertising and communicating the results to the agencies belonging to the Federal Administration.

In Argentina, everything concerning government propaganda is linked to the Telam News Agency. The Agency is responsible for carrying out the administrative tasks of the campaigns of the public bodies. In that sense, AGN points out that in 2009 Telam issued 29,030 advertising orders worth $825,919,224.95.

Of the total sum, 41.4% was allocated to broadcast TV channels ($342 million), 28% to graphic design ($231 million), 13% to cable signals ($107 million), and 10.5% to radios ($87 million). The remaining $59 million were distributed to public roads, websites, and movies.

As for the media companies where the advertising was carried out, also known as suppliers, Telefe stands out, having received $99 million, Channel 13 (93 million), Blue TV (now Channel 9, $55 million) America ($55 million), Página/12 ($42 million), Clarin ($34 million), a group known as Aste/Vere/Med/AG/News/7 Days, and editors of the Journal 23, among others ($31 million), and the newspaper La Nacion ($19 million).

The audit states that one of the keys to determining how to distribute the advertising is considering the choice of supplier, because it should be taken into account the target audience and therefore knowing which supplier is best, as well as the cost.

However, the report states: "The guidelines discussed for each particular campaign, are not justified by criteria or clear and specific mechanisms of government propaganda." Furthermore, "they don’t have a clear specific creative strategy, also known as determining what the most effective way to get the message to the target audience will be."

The watchdog summarizes from the observed data, that they could not determine which parameters were taken into consideration for awarding advertising between different media companies, and also failed to conclude whether or not they were given reasonable amounts of money.

How does it work?

The Audit detailed in their report that, according to ruling 984 passed in  2009, the bodies of the National Public Administration responsible for institutional advertising campaigns is the Communication and Media Department, which-in-turn then works through the Telam Agency.

These two agencies, the Department of Media and Telam, are who make all the advertising orders. The orders consist on sending the schedules with the times, durations, and frequencies of all propaganda.  Orders fall within what is known as public advertising.

The problem with this mechanism is the control. AGN says that it’s the media companies themselves the ones who check that the orders are carried out the way they are supposed to. This procedure is considered a "prerequisite for payment." Despite its importance, the Telam Agency "does not perform any procedure" to generate their own data and compare them with those collected by the media companies.

Moreover, the audit examined a sample of payments for advertising orders corresponding to different campaigns, and concluded that they "failed to identify homogeneous criteria for cancellation within the billing providers."

From that example the watchdog shows how some advertising campaigns were paid in less than two months, while other ads in different companies, sometimes within the same conglomerate took over a year for them to get cancelled, despite having cost much less.

Specifically, this example can be seen in the pages of the Clarin newspaper. According to a graph prepared by AGN, there was a campaign called "Tax Agreement" in which the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (AFIP), had a cost of $1,119,997, but for some reason was canceled just 56 days later.
On the contrary, in another ad of the "Third Anniversary" of the Argentine Water and Sanitation Company (AySA), which also had a spread in Clarin, took 436 days for the cancellation order to go through, even though its value amounted to $175,289.
   
The report details other cases of delays recorded in 2009, like for example the corporate campaign for the presidential elections, in the amount of $286,969, which the Telam Agency took 296 days to cancel; another example was the Ministry of Health which advertised the prevention of measles and polio, this was published in the free newspaper El Argentino, amounting to over $186,340 and the cancelation process was delayed 330 days, lastly a campaign by the Ministry of Defence over the Falkland Islands, which appeared in the newspaper La Nacion at a cost of $151,448 took 205 days to be canceled.