‘TARGETED FB ADS HELPED TRUMP WIN’
MICROTARGETED ADVERTISING PERSUADED UNDECIDED VOTERS: STUDY
LONDON: Micro-targeted advertising on Facebook went on to persuade undecided voters to support Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections, a study has found.
According to the researchers from the Charles III University of Madrid in Spain, Trump’s campaigners spent $44 million on Facebook advertisements in the run-up to the 2016 polls, compared to $28 million spent by Democrat candidate Hilary Clinton’s team.
Micro-targeted ads are messages sent out to Facebook users based on various factors such as their gender, location or political leanings.
This increased the probability that a non-aligned voter would decide to vote for candidate Trump by at least five percentage, according to the study.
On the other hand, the results show that Clinton did not manage to increase support among her potential voters, nor boost their participation in the polls.
“We do not have the necessary data to be able to understand why it worked for Trump and not for Clinton,” the researchers said.
In Trump’s case, the impact of the campaign was strongest among voters who used Facebook regularly, those who used it as their main source of news, and among voters without university or college-level education.
Political micro-targeting was particularly effective when based on ideology, gender or educational level, much less so when based on race or age.
“Our results show that learning about politics on Facebook does not make voters more informed, but it makes them less likely to change their voting choice,” said Federica Libernini, from ETH Zurich, in Switzerland.
“This effect is visible among men, Republican voters and people with a low level of education,” said Libernini.
“Thanks to predictive analytics, companies like Facebook offer a toolkit for targeting voters at a granular level based on their previous online behaviour,” said Michela Redoano, associate professor in the University of Warwick in the UK.
“It is vital that we understand how political campaigns on social media work, their impact on voter behaviour and on election results,” said Redoano.
Antonio Russo, from ETH Zurich, said, “We still have much to learn about whether the information that voters are exposed to on social media really helps them make informed choices,” said Russo.
The study comes at a time when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, is facing widespread criticism over data breach scandals including the infamous Cambridge Analytica episode.