Political reality: buy ads on Facebook or risk losing the election
Political reality: buy ads on Facebook or risk losing the election
In an audience sometimes heated in Washington last April, 55 representatives of the United States questioned
The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, about privacy issues and filtered user data. In the week before midterm elections in the United States, about two-thirds of the same representatives spend advertising campaign dollars on Facebook.
The enthusiasm of politicians to target potential voters and donors on Facebook crosses the lines of the party, as do their criticisms. Paul Tonko, a Democrat, told Mr. Zuckerberg at the time: "Users trusted Facebook to prioritize user privacy and data security, and that trust has been broken." Republican Tim Walberg expressed concern that Facebook was banning political content and publicity based on the views expressed in it.
The campaigns for both have subsequently invested money in Facebook advertising, according to a recently launched Facebook tool that allows anyone to seek advertisements for political campaigns and "matters of national importance." Neither of the two congressmen responded to the requests for comments.
Representative Greg Walden (R., Oregon), who directed the hearing before the House Commerce and Energy Committee, has placed hundreds of ads on Facebook since April, when Facebook's political advertising database begins. "Greg Walden reaches voters in the Second District of Oregon through all means, including connecting to voters online, on social media platforms and on radio, television and print newspapers," says a spokesperson for his Bell.
Facebook president Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill in April.
Photo:
Alex Wong / Getty Images
That few politicians feel that they can escape the need for advertising on Facebook is precisely why we must contemplate their increasing scale, income and power. The increase in political spending on Facebook's social networks, which also includes Instagram, is impressive: in 2014, spending on digital advertising was 1% of all spending on political advertising. Now it's 22%, or about $ 1.9 billion, depending on the Non-partisan center for responsive politics. Facebook says that politicians have spent almost $ 300 million In the USA. in Facebook ads since May. As of October 30, Democrats were spending more than Republicans on Facebook 3 to 1.
Politicians who want to reach the same voters that their competitors are reaching on Facebook have no choice but to go there, too. That is despite the growing criticism that Facebook's algorithms are driving greater political polarization and concern that the site serves as a vector for the campaigns of influence of Russia and now Iran. It can be considered that Facebook, a driver of our hectic political debate, benefits from the consequences.
Giving money to Facebook to address voters has become a collective action problem, much like the weaknesses of funding campaigns: politicians on both sides may wish to reduce Facebook's influence on the US elections. UU., But few are incentivized to act according to that desire.
Pointing to the voters
In the last midterm election season, sophisticated targeting with online ads was mostly limited to national campaigns, says Chris Massicotte, chief operating officer of DSPolitical, an advertising firm targeting progressive candidates and said he has served more than 4 billion ads since 2011. As these firms have proliferated, the cost of this type of online advertising has been reduced and the technology has been shrinking. "The majority of our clients are state legislative campaigns and municipal council careers," he adds.
The orientation of Facebook is not just about its large amount of data, but that helps. Campaigns and their consultants collect information about us from multiple data intermediaries, donor and mailing lists, voter registration records and other publicly available information sources (or that can be purchased). Advertisers, politicians or not, can match their databases with our real identities to send us a message. Whether it's an advertiser or a politician, Facebook's ability to match a list of names with identities on Facebook is one of its most useful capabilities as an ad-targeting platform.
"If I want Democrats who voted in the last two of the four general elections that are over 55 years old and are women, that's something that is available in the voters' files," says Massicotte.
Facebook is also very useful to test political messages. Campaigns can try a message in the way marketers publish new brands on Instagram, getting almost instantaneous comments about what works and what does not. These messages can then be sent to other media, says Mr. Massicotte.
And as regional careers gain national attention, candidates can harness the power of Facebook to target donors outside their district or state.
Voter tracking
During the April House hearing, Representative Debbie Dingell, (D., Mich.) Told Mr. Zuckerberg: "He does not even know all the kind of information that Facebook is collecting from its own users." How many pixels of Facebook are there on the web. Mr. Zuckerberg did not know. (Facebook Pixel is a snippet of code that websites incorporate and allows Facebook to track its users as they traverse the web).
The website of your campaign does not use Facebook Pixel. Instead, it uses a different tracking pixel, from the NGP VAN technology company. The firm also allows campaigns to integrate voter data. with the Facebook advertising network. And the Dingell representative campaign has bought several ads on Facebook since April. Representative Dingell's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the members of the House of Representatives who interrogated Mr. Zuckerberg, four are not running for office and one does not have a campaign website. Of the remaining 50, 44 have at least one form of tracker on their campaign websites, and 29 have Facebook's pixel tracker, according to Chandler Givens, executive director of the data privacy firm. Tracking of, which analyzed the sites for The Wall Street Journal.
"This is how they know who to track through Facebook ads: we collect our data without our knowledge and use it to influence the content we see," he says.
Not on Facebook
While Facebook advertising seems to be the norm in this intermediate season, there are those who have not yet purchased ads in the service. It is not necessarily a conscientious objection to Facebook: perhaps a holder in a secure seat does not want to spend the money; Perhaps a candidate still sees better results from television or radio, or is simply not up to date in digital advertising.
Of the members of the House of Representatives who questioned Mr. Zuckerberg, representatives Michael Burgess, Kathy Castor and Bobby Rush will run for re-election this year but, according to the Facebook ad database, they have not bought ads in the platform. Everyone has an overwhelming chance of winning their respective elections, according to the FiveThirtyEight election prediction site.
Politicians who are not on Facebook are giving the attention of voters to their opponents, says P.W. Singer, co-author of the book "LikeWar," which argues that Facebook has become another front in a global cybernetic conflict.
"It's a battle space and a market," says Mr. Singer. The result is an arms race among politicians who must spend to get their message to potential voters and donors.
All this is aligned very well with the profit motive of Facebook. In the company's most recent quarterly report, Facebook's number of monthly active users in the United States and Europe was flat, but per-user revenue increased significantly. As advertisers, whether politicians or merchants, become more sophisticated about the use of Facebook for buyers and voters with micro targets, Facebook will continue to make profits.
Write to Christopher Mims in christopher.mims@wsj.com
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