How targeted advertising can significantly change you make business
The Swiss media of Das Magazin launched an investigation into the role of “big data” in the victory of Donald Trump in the US elections. It caused a great resonance: some readers willingly believe in the effectiveness of the so-called psychological micro-targeting, others doubt it.
The article describes the technology of psychological micro-targeting and its impact on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. The publication said that psychological tests and social networks can be used to create very accurate psychological portraits of users, and then use this data to manipulate public opinion - this is what Cambridge Analytica, hired by Donald Trump, is doing to conduct a campaign in social networks.
Cambridge Analytica is a private company established in 2013. It deals with the problems of using data arrays in public relations and political technologies. The company is part of the British holding SCL Group and specializes in American politics. It is believed that Cambridge Analytica is funded by American billionaire Robert Mercer, a former engineer and programmer who has recently been known as an active sponsor and organizer of political campaigns.
The main thing that Cambridge Analytica does is the use of the psychological targeting method in social networks. Its essence is to first collect as much user data as possible, and then, analyzing the psychological stock of each of them, give them targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is indeed more effective than advertising that is not adapted to the needs of the audience. This is due to the fact that the audience is more likely to understand and remember the advertising messages prepared with regard to its requests. According to The Guardian at the disposal of the Cambridge Analytica were data on 50 million users of Facebook.
All these data allowed us not only to get an idea about the personalities of users, but also to create their full profile, which identifies beliefs, features of character, preferences, interests and much more. Such tests allowed to reveal political preferences as well: people with certain characteristics usually vote in a similar way. Most of all, the users liked their “likes” - based on a set of a few dozen at first glance, nothing that was said about a person was able to build fairly accurate patterns of behavior. All of this was discussed in research at the Center for Psychometrics at the University of Cambridge. On the basis of these data, it became possible to place political advertising much more efficiently than it was done before.
The New York Times found out that Donald Trump's headquarters worked closely with Cambridge Analytica. Trump's ability to work effectively with voters on the Internet, especially on Facebook, was repeatedly called one of the main reasons for his election victory.
Advertising in social networks and in particular on Facebook is a paradise for a marketer. If you even know in advance the fact that you are a man, then it is clear that it is pointless to show you an advertisement for women's shoes, and you can thus save twice the advertising budget. If at the same time you, for example, are fond of bicycles, then the effectiveness of showing you advertisements for bicycle parts increases many times over. You have no idea how much you can learn about you by examining your page. Even if the privacy settings are set in such a way that your posts are visible only to friends, they can be much less prudent: your comments under their open posts will be available to anyone.
On the Facebook page, you can easily find out what music they listen to, which TV shows they watch and which newspapers they read - and often where they buy their morning coffee and which party they vote for. Facebook knows more about you than any government or any organization. It covers almost all aspects of your life. After all, any of your requests can be compared in a split second with the entire history of your virtual life, from musical preferences to your favorite TV shows. From the history of your online purchases - to a bank account, the place of your last holiday, and so on. Thanks to all these marketing technologies, the effectiveness of your advertising co will increase significantly.
Thus, political advertising can be customized at an unprecedented, microscopic level. Absolutely individually, determining exactly what each particular voter will see on the network, about which you know just about everything: from the name, home address and profession to the level of income and photos of children. Therefore, as an already developed company or business, or a politician, one should not spare money and hire only highly qualified specialists in targeted advertising. After all, it can help you significantly save on advertising and at the same time seriously promote your business.