The far-right has been experimenting with new forms of high-value persuasion over the last five years or so, which are more subtle, cheaper, and more effective than the usual brick-in-the-face TV ad spend.
QAnon is one of those projects. So is the social micro-targeting used by Cambridge Analytica/AIQ which swung the Brexit vote in the UK and also did a lot to get Trump elected in 2016.
It would be irrational to assume the same thing wasn't attempted this year. All the media outlets I read - not just social media - have been heavily astroturfed with posts making the same pro-Trump scripted talking points over and over and over.
(HN has been relatively free of this, but I suspect that's primarily because conventional political debate is strongly discouraged outside of the occasional thread not because it wouldn't have been tried if it were possible.)
The problem with micro-targeting is that if you're not in one of the target groups, you don't see the ads - so unlike a TV campaign you're not aware of what the other guy is saying unless you can contrive some real and/or fake accounts that will get you an in.
And the propaganda techniques are both subtle and outrageous. (You might not think QAnon is subtle, but it's very carefully designed.)
Trump significantly outspent Biden on social. But the Trump campaign never really ended, while Biden had to start relatively cold.
So for all these and other reasons you're right. It's not about money, it's about narrative engineering implemented with money - and the right has always been much better at that than the left.