Investigation: in 2019, Trump's marketing campaign spent ~$20M on 218K+ Facebook ads targeting conservatives with marketing ploys designed to harvest user data
A Guardian investigation of 218,100 ads reveals how the campaign's sophisticated social media machine targets conservative voters Tweets: @juliacarriew , @juliacarriew , @juliacarriew , @justinhendrix , @jason_kint , @pareene , @flyosity , @juliacarriew , @antoniskalog , @shady_inf0 , @randombigbird , and @whotargetsme See also Mediagazer Tweets: Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : In 2019, Trump's reelection campaign spent $20m on 218,100 Facebook ads. We built a database to analyze them all. What we found: beneath the xenophobia and invective is a massive, mundane clickbait operation designed to harvest supporter data https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : Trump's ads have very little to say about the policies most American voters care most about. His number one “issue” is railing against the media, followed by anti-immigration rhetoric, complaints about impeachment, and broad claims about the economy https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : Still, beyond the layer of vitriol, the key takeaway is this: these ads are not about persuading anyone of anything. They are tailored to inflame conservatives to click a link and turn over their email addresses and phone numbers. That's it. That's the game. https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : All of that money Donald Trump is spending on Facebook? The Guardian finds the #1 message his campaign is pushing is simply anti-media. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : If you ever needed evidence why Facebook should be pressured to follow Google's lead and ban microtargeting of political ads, it's this thread, report. And note Bloomberg campaign is following the playbook in an arms race fueled by $ and competition regardless of consequences. 👇🏾 https://twitter.com/... @pareene : Trump 2016 was a direct marketing campaign that accidentally won a presidential election https://twitter.com/... Mike Rundle / @flyosity : Good thing Facebook provided pro-Trump employees who were ad targeting experts to embed in his 2016 campaign to provide @parscale the tips and techniques they're now using in 2020 to outpace the Democrats. Every designer and engineer at Facebook should be super proud. https://twitter.com/... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : Some of our findings: The Trump campaign is running *a lot* more ads than anyone else, suggesting a more sophisticated targeting and data harvesting campaign. The vast majority of his ads - 72% - received fewer than 1000 impressions. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Antonis Kalogeropoulos / @antoniskalog : “The media and its “fake news” are mentioned in 18.25% of the Trump's 2019 ads - more than any other issue. Trump's signature issue - immigration and a border wall - comes second, followed by impeachment, the economy, gun rights and the supreme court.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... @shady_inf0 : Trump campaign spent $20m on 218k ads last year, many of them spreading fear about immigration & msm bias, but also a lot of mudane run of the mill ads too. Here's the reason for those - “The campaign is all about data collection” said Parscale. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... @randombigbird : This is truly scary. Have Facebook ads swung our latest GE? FB does not allow analysis of their ads. They “lost” a large portion of their ads back in December. Is FB ruling us? One year inside Trump's monumental Facebook campaign https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Who Targets Me / @whotargetsme : Excellent report by @juliacarriew looking for the needles in the haystack of 218,000 @realDonaldTrump reelection ads. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer