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Bloomberg
President Donald Trump uses Facebook like a Swiss Army knife — to raise money, amplify his message, and mobilise voters. His rival, Joe Biden, uses the increasingly controversial social platform primarily to stick his hand out for donations.
As he did in 2016, Trump is taking advantage of the social media giant’s granular knowledge of its users’ interests to target specific ads to specific people, and is doing so much more often than Biden.
This “micro-targeting†allows Trump to tap into Facebook’s unique ability to rally his base of voters, who he needs to motivate as he trails Biden in most election polls.
Since entering the presidential contest in April 2019, Biden has spent $21 million on Facebook ads compared to $33 million for Trump over the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But the two campaigns are spending the money very differently.
People familiar with the company’s thinking said Facebook was considering banning political ads ahead of the US election, but for now it still allows candidates to narrowly target voters using its data.
Micro-targeting is using all the data social networks have on a user, from location to political leaning to what brands they buy, to generate the perfect ad. Google has limited how political campaigns can target voters using its digital ad
sales platform, and Twitter has banned campaign ads altogether. Twitter said it did so because of the potential for ads to spread misleading information, while Google said its policy means ads are more widely viewed and available for public discussion like ones airing on television and radio are.
Facebook has also taken only limited steps to ban hate speech that infiltrates some users feeds, which has led some large companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Starbucks to temporarily pull their ad dollars from the site.
Users can be targeted based on all kinds of information, including search and travel history. And the ads can be tweaked over time to make them more effective.
The Trump campaign does constant testing of its ads and makes small changes on a daily basis.
Through the morning of July 8 Biden’s campaign had bought about 23,000 distinct ads on the platform compared to more than 489,000 for Trump, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data made available by Facebook. About 68% of the president’s ads are seen fewer than 1,000 times compared to 34% for Biden, suggesting much more specific micro-targeting by Trump’s campaign.
Biden’s campaign is focussed on raising money and attacking Trump. So far he hasn’t used Facebook to hone his message or mobilise supporters, but he’s included appeals to sign petitions, which help him build up his list of email contacts, and to donate. Recent pitches asked for 2.5 million supporters to take a stand against Trump’s “hatred, division and calls for violence†by signing an online petition.