Analysis by progressive think tank the Australia Institute has found a big overall social media spend of $12.5 million over the final two months of the May election on Facebook and Instagram pages was better utilised by the Labor campaign, which spent the most at $5 million for candidate and party pages - 62 per cent more that the Liberal Party, which spent about $3 million.

The institute tracked 26,945 Facebook and Instagram ads from 608 political pages through the Facebook Ad Library in the two months leading up to May 21.

It found the candidates contesting the ACT Senate race spent a total of $192,150 on ads published by their individual pages.

Former senator Zed Seselja topped the list of candidates with a total of $50,300 spent on ads, followed by newly elected Senator David Pocock, who came in second at $44,700. Kim Rubenstein was third with an ad spend of $26,200 while the re-elected Labor senator Katy Gallagher came in fourth with a total ad spend of $13,150.

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The extent to which the advertising switched votes is unknown, and there was an accompanying massive election spend on traditional TV, radio and newspaper advertising, but the analysis points to Labor and progressive parties and candidates successfully engaging women voters to a far higher degree than the Coalition.

It follows research released on Monday from the Australian National University which found younger and educated voters were where the Coalition government lost the most support at the election.

A total of $12.5 million was spent on Australian electioneering in that crucial period, with Labor spending the most, the Liberal Party paying about $3 million and Clive Palmer's UAP spent $1.7 million.

Candidates running for the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, including former treasurer Josh Frydenberg and the independent winner Monique Ryan, collectively spent $339,450 on social media ads, the highest ad spend of candidates in any electoral division.

There were more than 645 million impressions of the political ads on Facebook and Instagram and a higher proportion were female social media users. The analysis found women accounted for 54.2 per cent of impressions, compared with 45.8 per cent for men.

Impressions were highest for the Labor Party and their candidates, at 42.5 per cent. The Coalition and their candidates had 31.9 per cent of the total share, while the Greens captured 31.4 million ad impressions.

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