It has become a standard feature of political campaigning in the EU to use ads on social media to reach voters and supporters.
In Germany, political parties spent nearly €3m on Facebook ads in 2019 and expenditures in the UK and other countries are even higher.
The advertising machines of social networks and search engines make it relatively easy and cheap to reach masses of voters quickly. This has helped increase the scale of voter outreach, but the unprecedented masses of ads make public-interest scrutiny hard for journalists, researchers and regulators.
Micro-targeting means targeting specific, homogeneous audiences. This is possible on social media due to the vast amounts of personal behavioural data that platforms have on users: people are grouped into advertising profiles based on their preferences, dislikes and fears. Political advertisers can then use the platforms' algorithmic ad delivery to find specific audiences and hammer home certain political messages to those who are most likely to engage with them.
This micro-targeting helps campaigns reach voters but, comes with risks: there is a danger of paying to amplify existing polarised debates and voter segmentation. These risks need to be urgently addresses by putting in place safeguards for micro-targeting.
Limiting micro-targeting is not a new idea, but it is gaining traction in the EU, as it is part of the deliberations surrounding the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP). The EDAP deals with question of media pluralism and political advertising, and one key component could be limiting micro-targeting for political ads.
Platforms already took some steps in this direction: for example, Facebook offers a tool to review what ad interests users have and Google allows only basic demographic data to target political ads. Such voluntarily efforts should be improved upon, made mandatory and implemented industry-wide.
Julian Jaursch is a project director working on disinformation and platform regulation topics at Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV), a Berlin-based not-for-profit, non-partisan tech policy think tank.
Author: Julian Jaursch